First of all, the physical process of human inspiration is that a human looks at something, their optic nerves fire, those impulses activate other neruons in the brain, and an idea forms. That's exactly how an AI takes "inspiration" from images. This stuff about free will and consciousness is metaphysics. There's no meaningful difference in the actual process.
Secondly, let's look at this:
SAG-AFTRA just got a contract offer that says background performers would get their likeness scanned and have it belong to the studio FOREVER so that they can simply generate these performers through AI.
This is what is happening RIGHT NOW. And you want to compare the output of an AI to a human's blood sweat and tears, and argue that copyright protections would HURT people rather than help them avoid exploitation.
I'll say right off that I don't appreciate the "you're a bad person" schtick. Switching to personal attacks stinks of desperation. Plus, your personal attack on me isn't even correct, because I don't approve of the situation you described any more than you do. The reason they're trying to slip that into those people's contracts is because those people own their likenesses under existing copyright law. That is, you don't have to come up with a funny interpretation of copyright law where concepts can be copyrighted but only if a machine learns them. They need a license to use those people's likenesses regardless of whether they use an AI or Photoshop or just have a painter do it. Using AI doesn't get them out of that -- if it did; they wouldn't need to try to put it into the contract.
In other words, they aren't using an AI to attack anyone; they're using a powerful bargaining position to try to get people to sign away an established right they already have according to copyright law. That has absolutely nothing to do with anything I'm talking about here, except that you want to attach it to what I'm talking about so you can have something to rage about.
And here's the thing. None of you people ever gave a shit when anybody else's job was automated away. Cashiers have had their work automated away recently and all I hear is "ThAt'S oKaY bEcAuSe tHeIr jOb sUcKs!!!!!!111" Artists have been actually violating the real copyright of other artists (NOT JUST LEARNING CONCEPTS) with fanart (which is a DERIVATIVE WORK OF A COPYRIGHTED CHARACTER) for god only knows how long and there's certainly never been a big outcry about that.
It sucks to be the ones looking down the business end of automation. I know that because as a computer programmer I am too. On the other hand, I can see past the end of my own nose, and I know how amazing it would be if lots of regular people suddenly had the ability to do the things that I do, so I'm not going to sit there and creatively interpret copyright law in an attempt to prevent that from happening. If you're worried about the effects of automation, you need to start thinking about things like a universal healthcare and universal income, not just ESTABLISH SPECIAL PROTECTIONS FOR A TINY SUBSET OF PEOPLE WHOM YOU HAPPEN TO LIKE. It just seems a bit convenient, and (dare I say) selfish that the point in history that we need to start smashing the machines happens to be right now. Why not the printing press or the cotton gin or machines that build railroads or looms or or robots in factories or grocery store kiosks? The transition sucked for all those people as well. It's going to suck for artists, and it'll suck for me, but in the end we can pull through and be better off for it, rather than killing the technology in its infancy and calling everyone a monster who doesn't believe that you and you alone ought to have special privileges.
We need to be using the political clout we have to push us toward a workable post-scarcity economy, as opposed to trying to preserve a single, tiny bit of scarcity so a small group of people can continue to do something while everybody else is automated away and we all end up ruled by a bunch of rent-seeking corporations. Your gatekeeping of the ability of people to do art isn't going to prevent any of that.
P.S. We seem to be at the very beginning of a major climate disaster these last couple weeks, so we're probably all equally fucked anyway.