I think it’s more nuanced than that. Copyright is just the only hammer available at the moment.

We should have some laws around media integrity, creative dignity, labor rights, etc. that we could use to fight back against the problematic parts of the AI empire without creating new problems for consumers, creators, and even the useful parts of AI.

But, for obvious reasons, lawmakers haven’t been as interested in protecting the arts as they have been in protecting legal monopolies.