I agree with your Stephen King analogy. Back in the 90s a recording artist named Beck hit the scene with a very unique sound and style, with the song Loser. Shortly there after a band named The butthole surfers (smh) released Pepper, which sounded identical to Beck’s sound, but wasn’t a copyright violation. In poor taste, maybe, but not illegal. I think AI is a similar situation. It can be inspired at a faster pace than humans, but it’s still fundamentally the same process.