I'm not so sure about that. It seems to me that they're selling me a service. Just like I might pay for a subscription to Adobe Photoshop or pay per-render fees to a rendering farm.
I could use Photoshop to reproduce a copyrighted work, and in some circumstances (i.e. personal use) that'd be fine. Or I could use Photoshop to reproduce a copyrighted work and try to sell it for profit, which would clearly not be fine. Nobody is saying that Adobe has to recognize whether or not the pixels I'm editing constitute a copyrighted work or not.
It seems weird to sue an AI company because their tool "can recite [copyrighted]" content verbatim.
If I paid a human to recite the whole front page of the New York Times to me, they could probably do it. There's nothing infringing about that. However, if I videotape them reciting the front page of the New York Times and start selling that video, then I'd be infringing on the copyright.
The guy that I paid to tell me about what NYT was saying didn't do anything wrong. Whether there's any copyright infringement would depend what I did with the output.
Human brains are still the main legal agents in play. LLMs are just a computer programs used by humans.
Suppose I research for a book that I'm writing - it doesn't matter whether I type it on a Mac, PC, or typewriter. It doesn't matter if I use the internet or the library. It doesn't matter if I use an AI powered voice-to-text keyboard or an AI assistant.
If I release a book that has a chapter which was blatantly copied from another book, I might be sued under copyright law. That doesn't mean that we should lock me out of the library, or prevent my tools from working there.
Trying to prohibit this usage of information would not help prevent centralization of power and profit.
All it would do is momentarily slow AI progress (which is fine), and allow OpenAI et al to pull the ladder up behind them (which fuels centralization of power and profit).
By what mechanism do you think your desired outcome would prevent centralization of profit to the players who are already the largest?
Why do you expect an AI to cite it's source? Humans are allowed to use and profit on knowledge they've learned from any and all sources without having to mention or even remember their sources.
Yes, we all agree that it's better if they do remember and mention their sources, but we don't sue them for failing to do so.
It's clearly not enough to cover all of the expenses that are required to generate your "revenue", but it's a gesture in that direction.