I think in that case, you're missing what the article is saying. It's not talking about building something new but not having people understand it. It's saying that anything new that you can build, someone else can build faster with AI.

To stretch the book analogy beyond breaking point, it would be like if Patrick Rothfuss released The Name of the Wind, and JK Rowling immediately put out "Harry Potter and the Kingkiller Chronicles, now with added Kvothe", and basically used her name and the Harry Potter brand to outcompete Rothfuss selling the same thing. (Obviously for books, you've got copyright, but there's no copyright for your favourite app idea.)

I think the extent to which that is actually true is hard to say, but I think it's a different point to the one you're arguing against here.

Your point came through clearly to me. Shared tropes or setting do not make identical stories and, in fact, often enhance them as a counterbalance or familiar thing to compare against.

A wise friend of mine once said, in regard to "ideas are nothing; execution is everything": you can tell a thousand artists to paint a portrait of an Italian woman with a countryside landscape behind her but, good or bad, none of them are the mona lisa.