Maybe, depends on the threshold for human creativity, which is still in flux.
You could copyright the underlying character maybe. But its a major headache for these companies and a symptom of the broader fact that copyright needs legislative reform, not attempting to shoehorn AI into the current law.
Is this in regards to established legal protections or in regards to ethics?
I am not sure that legal protections are guaranteed with using adobe AI, it could be better censored and so less risky(?), but I've not looked into that much yet.
As far as ethics go, I'm not sure that the photographers or artists or people in the stock photos had intended to give rights to remix their work using AI for all sorts of unforeseen uses.. and not just taking a person and putting their face in a pic / advert about [insert terrible thing here] - but also change their expression ..
$50mm pre-product valuations for startups producing 3D assets for games via prompting a foundation model.
Zero due diligence on the U.S. copyright office’s stance that every asset those companies generate will be open to reuse.