You can "hand paint" in Photoshop, but you can also assemble collages composed of bits and pieces of other copyrighted works and create a result that is still copyrightable. Why is the latter currently legal in your opinion?
if the things you're collaging can't be copyrighted because they lack human authorship, you can only copyright the arrangement, not the things you're arranging.
If they have human authorship, its the original human artist's work you're collaging and now you're creating an unauthorized derivative work violating many copyrights.
If you do not license the "bits and pieces" then the courts will find you in violation of their copyrights. Pretending AI is different is bizarre out-of-touch "but I'm so special" solipsism.
I believe you are wrong there. Transformative art requires no licensing as long as it falls under fair use.
I can quote a book in my article without licensing the quote from the author. I can clip eyebrows off of copyrighted magazine portraits and assemble them into a eyebrow version of some famous art piece and never have to license a thing. I can take screenshots of copyrighted YouTube videos and assemble a "shirts of YouTubers" that I lasso tool'd and collaged together and create an entirely new copyrighted work without having to license a thing. I can take a photo of a street which contains an art gallery and copyrighted art can appear in my photo without having to license anything from the artist. Fair use would cover taking 1 out of 1 million pixels and assembling it into a new image if a human were to perform that action.
