You need to properly detect that they're bots first and then they'll just figure out how to spoof that. Then you're back to square one.
Abstractly, POW doesn't need to determine if you're a bot or not. To make a request, as a human or bot, you need to pay in cpu-time. The hope is that the cost is not so high that a human notices very much but for a bot trying to hoover up data as fast as possible, the aggregate cost is high.
I think the more horrifying aspect is that they'll just build ever bigger datacenters to crunch POW tests faster and the carbon cost will skyrocket even more.
I think, in this particular case, it's aggressive apathy/incompetence and not malice. Remember, Trump didn't even know what Nvidia was.
AI's don't have a skin color or use the bathroom so you can't whip your cult into a frenzy by Othering it. You can't solidify your fascism by getting bogged down in the details of IP law.