I think the line is drawn when a machine is doing the processing. I disagree that the brain of the AI doesn’t really contain the art, as even though this might be literally true, there have been instances of AI generating images that are extremely similar to source images from its dataset (given the right prompt).

I think that any art AI creates is a form of plagiarism, as the only reason it can create anything at all is because it has deduced patterns from its dataset of existing art. Without that other art, it literally could not create anything. In regards to an AI creating a new style of art, I don’t think that will ever happen without sentient intelligence. AI doesn’t have creativity, anything it creates is a combination of data on other art pieces. Also, I think that if the AI’s deduction was observed and compared with it’s prompt, you absolutely could find out exactly what the inspiration was for its new art.

Now if an AI achieved true sentient intelligence, perhaps at a certain scale it would overcome these issues and be able to create original art. I think the human brain is a mysterious art generator that is much more complex than a large language model finding patterns.