Gill?  this is not to bash on you, or anything of that ilk; however, i'd really like to ask a serious question, and you sound as if you know a lot about AI.  so if you'd be willing to help me understand something, i'd surely appreciate it...  if not, hey, that's cool, too. :))

and for clarification, i don't just load something into Poser, and hit render.  i create a lot of my own textures, be it for character skins, hair, clothing, and props.  i set up most of all my own shaders.  i use my own lights & poses.  it actually takes me about 2.5 days [time permitting] to "throw" something together.  and that's not taking in the time for prep, like creating those things mentioned above, or the editing of models, or the re-rigging of things, etc.  long ago i decided that because assets that i have purchased, meaning models, were NOT things i created, that i do need to do my best to try to create as much of anything else myself to the best of my ability so that some part of me might actually exist in whatever result i ended up with - doing so is extremely important to me, but that's me.  and no one is required to follow the same mindset that i've laid out for myself.  i'm extremely cool with that...

edit: forgot to mention that 2.5 days also excludes assembling the render in Photoshop, as i do tend to render out in layers, such as separate shadow map, individual portions for clean crisp alphas, etc., and whatever further painting i decide to do to try to make it "mine", such as further refinement of lighting, or painting over assets, that type of thing...

and i don't claim to be an artist, either, btw.  i'm a hobbyist, at best.

anyway, my question is this: if AI isn't borrowing from other artists, where do those ghost signatures come from?

thanks for your time & consideration on my question :))