"... the copyright laws are a bit of a mess right now."

No. The copyright laws are just fine. This crap of stealing someone's work and using it for something else is a mess.

"AI training on copyrighted work, is it fair use?"

No. It has been explained already. Fair use is a part of copyright that exists for the art that is created and fair use of the work was ended by the fact that it was dismantled and dissected. You cannot take one of my copyrighted photos and manipulate it into something else. Clear rulings on that.

"Can AI-generated content be copyright protected?"

The copyright office is very clear that it cannot be copyrighted because it is not created by a human. Simple. Human made things are copyrightable. Things made by chimpanzees and computers are not.

AI has no attribution component. It cannot say "I used the data sets from these 2300 items to create this piece in front of you" and am claiming fair use.

Fair use is clear in what it means and what you can do with work under fair use.

For one thing, you cannot monetize it.

The laws are clear.

It's the wastrel techbros that are a mess.