AI - AA - OI !
....you can't do that! Of course they can and will.
AI 'Art Generators' are another palette, another tool of the 'artist'. Perhaps they are artificial minds, which observe the world and are 'inspired' to create. Why not both.
Sucks to be an artist in any genre, Once your 'masterpiece' has been revealed, it is gone.
The best one can hope, is that in your lifetime, someone pays you at least once for the piece and you receive recognition as being the OG, and prime influence on the derivitives.
Occasionally it is the derivitves which drive interest in the OG.beyond any reach they could achieve - preferably before they are found mouldering, pennyless in a lonely garret- but it was ever thus.
I find AI generated art patently AI generated, and not my cup of Tetley. However, it didn't drag itself to a gallery on a twisted metal limb and with blinking red eye, rasped "Exhibit this if you want to live" The 'artist' is surely the person (or collective) who used the AI palette, the canvas, the tool.
I have sympathy with all original creators, who see others rake the riches. Many of us have created something and never reaped our just rewards.
Perhaps we didn't realise how just the rewards could have been, and were quite happy with the price of a bottle of absinthe and a weeks rent...until we saw our patron ride past in the fancy carriage.
Perhaps it even was an original work - So far as we could tell at least, before someone else pipes up "AA! OI! I came up with that idea mate, you're ripping me off!"
Nothing new here.