>>936684215
You bring up something that I think will be much more debatable now with the presence of AI image generation. If something is hand drawn it now inherently holds artistic value, does it not? A human spent possibly hours rendering something from their mind.
However, should this offer any protection at all to the artists using real CSEM for reference? Personally I think that because it is a crime on its own, regardless of its use, the artist would be essentially self-reporting.