> The process for a human to copy her style in an original work would be similar
It wouldn't be similar at all. It takes years to get skills good enough to even copy stuff like that. With AI person who never did any art in their lives can get hundreds of copies in few hours.
The engineer stumbled onto the least sympathetic, least transformative, most obnoxious use case for the AI. He was trading on the artist's name, confusing people and even arguably devaluing her work by reproducing it in a clumsy and low-value way. Folks in the industry would do better to acknowledge, as he did, that this was wrong and establish standards so everyone knows this is not considered a proper practice.
It wouldn't be similar at all. It takes years to get skills good enough to even copy stuff like that. With AI person who never did any art in their lives can get hundreds of copies in few hours.