Fair use by most standards? Which standards are those? I don't think a standard about training an AI on billions of images exists.

By the same 'transformative' standards that allow satire, reaction and commentary videos to exist. And those take 100% from the source and add context, whereas good generated AI images that aren't wholesale copying take like less than 10% from the original source.

In addition, the idea that you need to pay rent on *your observation* of someone else's work is absurd. No one pays Newton's descendants for making lifts or hosting bungee jump sport activities.