It looks to me like you’re talking about something else compared to the person you’re replying to.
To my eyes, he’s arguing in favor of the technology as a concept, while you’re arguing against specific products (let’s say midjourney, for the sake of the discussion). If midjourney proved beyond any doubt that their model was trained on a data set that they had rights to (by buying them from artists, or the images already being copyright free, doesn’t matter), would you still be against it?
Similarly, you said you’re against your work being used for commercial purposes, but would you be ok with me training a model on your work, and then using AI to generate images in your style that I use as, for example, character art for my DnD games that I will pay with friends? (making an assumption here, don’t know what kind of artist you are)
Got any links to support these claims? I’d be interested to know more for when people bring up the same argument as the person you’re replying to.