If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they see it as being no different than pirating any other kind of media from multi billion dollar corporations, which completely ignores the fact that those hurt the most by genAI models are the small artists who lose out both on both having their labor stolen and losing potential future customers.

Either that, or they have the same mentality as middle managers and upper management in that they don’t value the labor required to produce art but desire the end result, and work backwards from there to justify it.