I can’t unsee it anymore. It really does look like one.

No, not really. But that’s more because the government and economy of China and the USA works fundamentally different. The US does a lot of foreign investment. But it’s done by the private sector. Chinese companies aren’t allowed to do foreign investments without approval of the Chinese government. So everytime a “private” Chinese company does an investment abroad, the Chinese government is directly involved.

The closest would probably be the landlease to Ukraine. All/most of the aid packages have to be paid back. Not necessarily with direct payments but by awarding (re-)building projects to US companies.

And obviously there is the IMF where the US pays the highest quota to and therfore has the highest voting power in how the money of the IMF is distributed.

I don’t think how you interact with a tool matters. Typing what you want, drawing it yourself, or clicking through options is all the same. There are even other programs that allow you to draw by typing. They are way more difficult but again, I don’t think the difficulty matters.

There are other tools that allow you to recreate copyrighted material fairly easily. Character creators being on the top of the list. Games like Sims are well known for having tons of Sims that are characters from copyrighted IP. Everyone can recreate Barbie or any Disney Princess in the Sims. Heck, you can even download pre made characters on the official mod site. Yet we aren’t calling out the Sims for selling these characters. Because it doesn’t make sense.

The comparision doesn’t work. Because the AI is replacing the pencil or other drawing tool. And we aren’t saying pencil companies are selling you Mario pics because you can draw a Mario picture with a pencil either. Just because the process of how the drawing is made differs, doesn’t change the concept behind it.

An AI tool that advertises Mario pcitures would break copyright/trademark laws and hear from Nintendo quickly.