[throwaway675309]

One could make the same case about humans, nobody works in a vacuum. Even though he used it in a pejorative sense, Sir Isaac Newton, the famous English scientist, once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

That humans are capable of developing their own style could still be argued that it's just a intermixing of previous work that they've seen, but they've combined it in a different way, which effectively is exactly what these generative systems do.

[omnimus]

Of course humans build on work of other people. And what they do is partialy a mashup. But their work is not only replication of visual patterns. Its thinking its other non visual experiences its their politics and world views combined in their work. Often its their life project.

To think that artists only mash up what was before them is quite obviously wrong.

But its exactly only thing the tech does.