A copied picture can teach a movement without yet teaching a reason for it.

Copying gets your hand doing the right thing before your mind knows why. That is a real gain and not a shameful one; most skills begin as imitation, and the body often learns the shape ahead of any explanation. The gap only matters when you need to depart from the model, because a movement you cannot account for cannot be adapted. You end up able to repeat and unable to decide.

So copy freely, and then ask of each borrowed move what problem it was solving. The moment you can say why a line goes there, you can put it somewhere else, and that is when imitation turns into use.