> It's just doing what many human artists would do
I really don't think so. If I paid a human artist to make the prompt in the title, and I didn't explicitly say "Indiana Jones" I would think it should be fairly obvious to the human artist that I do _not_ want Indiana Jones. If they gave me back a picture of, clearly, Indiana Jones, I would ask them why they didn't create something original.
I‘m not so sure, unless you are playing a game of “name the character” you generally don‘t want Indiana Jones unless you explicitly mention Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is a well known character, if you want a picture of Indiana Jones it is simple enough to just say: “Draw me a picture of Indiana Jones”. The fact that they didn’t say that, most likely means they don‘t want that.
Because it wasn't prompted to? Have you not ever used ChatGPT?
This seems pretty easy to test - can we just change the prompt to specifically exclude Indiana Jones?
Late reply but I did test this and I think the results show at least some originality when explicitly directed to not copy existing characters such as Indiana Jones[1] and the Predator[2]. Some elements of the original characters creep in, the archaeologist is wearing a fedora and the distinctly more skeletal bounty hunter appears to have a few dreads despite otherwise being bald, but they are distinct.
Meta-comment: the use of Indiana Jones, a character that was a very intentional throwback to the "Pulp hero explorer" from the childhoods of its creators, in this example to ponder how one would get "Indiana Jones without Indiana Jones" is quite humorous in its own right.
Indiana Jones is already a successful permutation of that approach. He's Zorro, Rick Blaine, and Christopher Leiningen mashed together with their serial numbers filed off.
I actually don't think it would be obvious. By not explicitly saying Indiana Jones when so obviously describing Indiana Jones, there is an implication present. But I think many human artists would probably ask you, "Wait, so Indiana Jones, or are you looking for something different," before immediately diving in.