I think you are going a bit too far.
Let's start from the beginning, create and own:
You're sketching out some nude fanart on a piece of paper. You created that and own that. Thas has always been illegal?!
(This is apart from my feelings on Mechahitler/Grok, which aren't positive.)
You can _almost_ do anything you want in the privacy of your home; but in this case Twitter was actively and directly disseminating pictures publicly on their platform.
And profiting from it, though less directly than "$ for illegal images". Even if it wasn't behind a paywall (which it mostly is) driving more traffic for more ads for more income is still profiting from illegal imagery.
> You're sketching out some nude fanart on a piece of paper.
Is twitter a piece of paper in your desk? No, it's not.
Right.
OP had "It has always been illegal and morally reprehensible to create, own, distribute or store "
It would make more sense then to instead say:
"It has always been illegal and morally reprehensible to distribute "
Again, AI deepfakes are not sketches in a piece of paper. There's a massive difference between drawing your coworker naked on a piece of paper (weird, but certainly not criminal), and going "grok generate a video of my coworker bouncing on my d*ck". Not to mention the latter is generated and stored god knows where, against the consent of the depicted person.