People have also spent lifetimes perfecting the art of painting, putting years of effort in, and then used those talents to... Make sellable copies of the Mona Lisa. Ironically, since copyright has a time limit, that's not even illegal (so long as they do not claim they're original works of da Vinci). Nor is photographing it and selling the photograph. I'm not sure what argument you're making given the observations you've made (other than, perhaps, "There is a big gap between the mechanics of copyright and what it's supposed to accomplish," which I'd agree with).

I respect those people quite a lot. A lot more than I respect the parasites and frauds filling out the machine learning department.