The suit alleges that the AI image-generators violate the rights of millions of artists by ingesting huge troves of digital images and then producing derivative works that compete against the originals.

The artists say they are not inherently opposed to AI, but they don’t want to be exploited by it. They are seeking class-action damages and a court order to stop companies from exploiting artistic works without consent.

It says right in the article that they’re suing over the training and the commercial use of the output. Their lawyer obviously felt that it was essential to include both parts of that, and I thunk it’s because simplyusing a copyrighted work to train AI may not be infringing, but using it and the selling the output is.

I just don’t think you can separate how the AI is trained from what the company intends to do with the trained AI. If they intend to sell their output, then I don’t think that will be allowed in current copyright law.