I think that's exactly the sort of flawed analysis these copyright trolls do. They see something they never would have had a hand in and count it as "theirs", and then greed kicks in. It's like the old MPAA/RIAA calculations of lost revenue that assume someone would have bought a CD if they didn't download a song. Only worse because at least in the downloading case, they are a 1:1 substitute.

In almost all cases I'd guess that artists whose style is being copied by many genAI users are getting way more exposure than in some alternate universe where midjourney didn't exist. But nobody looks at it that way, they just see somebody else making profit and think they deserve some.