you draw my hero academia and helluva boss fan art which is just as much infringing on intellectual property and content slop generation as AI image generation

Ah yes, the false equivalency. Okay, let's break this down.

Fan art is derivative work, yes! While personal, non-commercial use and sharing can generally be considered legal, selling it is where it becomes an issue. But there's something to keep in mind here, and that's the environment in which these things exist. Companies and artists are well within their rights to tell people not to produce/sell fan art. And some do! Disney is a prime example. I'm going to focus on anime though, as that's my particular wheelhouse.

Creating and selling fan art is a known and understood part of the fandom experience. Companies could very easily tell every single person in the artist alley to hit the bricks and hit them with a cease and desist, because it is against the law. And sometimes they do! Because they are all present at conventions, walking the aisles and looking out for problems. Looking for anyone who has over stepped a boundary. There's an understanding of what's going on and as long as you don't go too far, they're not going to bother. For example, if I remember correctly, Funimation would put a stop to it if you included the anime's logo in the artwork. Otherwise, you're fine. The main difference here is that with AI, people's art and art styles are being stolen without their knowledge or permission, and just about everybody wasn't cool with that. If you gave these AI people permission to scrape your work? By all means. But there's no understanding between artists and the AI people the way there is between companies and fans of their work like there is at conventions. So yes, infringement is happening but it's known and generally accepted (and often appreciated!) AI scraping is not.

Now that we've covered that, let's go over why drawing fan art and generating "art" with AI are different.

At the end of the day, generative AI is disrespectful to art and artists. Taking the time to draw something because you love and appreciate it will never be "slop" the way generative AI is.