I think you're simply unfamiliar with the topic. Have you ever interacted with abandonware communities from 20+ years ago? Since you're so sure their goal was copyright infringement.

In many cases, all that remains of these games is the cracked digital versions, the physical versions don't exist anymore. The abandonware crew did all the preserving, without them there wouldn't be anything to release, AI or not.

Also, a lot of "legally available" software from today (say, via GOG who do own the rights) has the fingerprints of crackers who made it possible for the software to run today.

> And a lot of pirates who share copyrighted material had that material originate from a legal purchase. That doesn't make it any less worse.

What an absurd thing to claim. Regular pirates distribute recent games, which is obviously an entirely different matter. The abandonware community is/was concerned with preserving digital artifacts and games for posterity, and making old stuff playable today. Games that otherwise would have been lost, forgotten, or simply impossible to play. Those are completely different goals, and it's a blatant lie that they did it "to commit copyright infringement".

I don't want to offend you, but your initial claim that abandonware crews decades ago should have somehow foreseen AI would make cracking/fixing easier is the most deranged thing I've read in a while. It also doesn't address that something you cannot play in your lifetime is effectively unavailable and lost to you.