AI usage doesn't remove copyright, it just doesn't gain any new copyright by itself

so a AI based transformation of a copyrighted input is as much a potential copyright violation as a non AI based transformation.

It's just that the human transformation can by potentially itself be seen as art, so if you have a license or fair use you now can have copyright on the transformed peace (with some limitations (1)). And if the transformation is done by AI you won't (but the original authors "partial" copyright on the outcome is still there).

(1): Like if you (human) "transform" a peace of art in 1000 different ways each keeping 0.001% of the original you will likely get 1000x copyright. But if you then use this 1000 peaces you have copyright too to regenerate the original you still have full copyright infringement. In general the law doesn't care about your "trickery" trying to bend laws.