If I buy a pencil and draw a copyrighted character, is that copyright infringement? No. If I sell that drawing? Yes.
Midjourney and other AI companies are not selling you the drawing, they're selling you the pencil. What you do with that pencil and the drawings you create with that pencil is on you and you alone.
AI inputs are not outputs. Copyright exists at the output. You can't sue someone for reading every book in the library unless they try to sell one of them as their own.
Oh don’t worry, once BCIs get developed you’ll live in a pay per thought society, and if you think negatively of it, boy will you ever pay. It’s science fiction today but I doubt it will remain so for our lifetimes.
If we let them own our thoughts they will -- control over AI inputs is part of that dystopian trajectory IMO. And if it arrives in our lifetime I will flee The Convergence and hide with Priest Entity Nada and Polo in the Space Anomaly :nerdface