There's a pretty big free open source community around AI and many of the best models are completely free.

It's ironic a bit because I'm guessing big companies like openai are the ones pushing the AI is theft issue since open source wouldn't be able to afford the price asked by data aggregators like Reddit, Getty, Adobe, etc. Sadly, getting paid was never in the cards for individual artists, most of the data is owned by specific websites.

In the same vein, OpenAI was lobbying for Congress to enact laws because AI could be "dangerous". It's quite clear they wanted to essentially outlaw any competition from small organisations by pilling on even more costs.

So yes, they might end up owning all of AI and by extent the economy, but we'd have to let ourselves be manipulated into giving it to them. Sadly a lot of people only deal in emotive knee jerk reactions so it might work.