Comment by TeMPOraL

That makes no sense, neither legally nor philosophically.

> Language developed independently of translators.

And it also developed independently of writers and poets.

> Artists shape the space in which they’re generating output.

Not writers and poets, apparently. And so maybe not even artists, who typically mostly painted book references. Color perception and symbolism developed independently of professional artists, too. Moreover, all of the things you mention predate copyright.

> The fear now is that if we no longer have a market where people generate novel arts, that space will stagnate.

But that will never happen; it's near-impossible to stop humans from generating novel arts. They just do it as a matter of course - and the more accessible the tools are, the more people participate.

Yes, memes are a form of art, too.

What's a real threat is lack of shared consumption of art. This has been happening for the past couple decades now, first with books, then with visual arts. AI will make this problem worse by both further increasing volume of "novel arts" and by enabling personalization. The real value we're using is the role of art as social objects - the ability to relate to each other by means of experiencing the same works of art, and thus being able to discuss and reference it. If no two people ever experienced the same works of art, there's not much about art they can talk about; if there's no shared set of art seen by most people in a society, there's a social baseline lost. That problem does worry me.