I was trying to keep it simple.
I would have paid them by purchasing the iphone and whatever software I used. I paid for the car that transported me. I would have paid for my education. People can also give their work away for free if they want, or be compensated by ads as in the case of Youtube or FOSS.
Current copyright is an utter bastardization of its intended use. Massive corporations are trying to act like they’re fighting for the little guy to own their IP forever. But they buy up all that IP for pennies compared to how they turn around and commoditize it. Then they own all of what society produces in perpetuity. They can sit on their dragon hoards and laugh as they gobble up any new creation that strays too close. And people wonder why everything is a sequel of a sequel of a sequel owned by massive corporations.
What do you think ChatGPT is trying to do? It's already being used to churn out shitloads of garbage content. They're not making things better.
The problem is that they didn't pay for the content they've acquired and they're selling it to others. The creators are not being compensated and may not want to participate in AI development at all. If the creators agree to it then fine but most do not. Just look at what's happening with art. People are scraping all of an artists work to create AI pictures in their style and impersonate them. That's not okay.