This should prove intereting.

They're right. 

Humans wrote the software that created it, and set the parameters, therefore the images are created by humans. It's a bit like saying a photo taken using a digital camera cannot be copyrighted.

www.bing.com/search?go=Search&q=famous+digital+artists&qs=ds&form=QBRE

The copyright office needs to get up to date, or in fact, someone there has made a mistake.

I once approached a London art gallery asking if they would like to hang some of my art. Send some in, they said. I replied I can email it, and if you are interested I can get it printed, on canvas of you prefer. It's created to be Poster Size. What do you mean? they asked. I said it's created on a PC, freehand. No thanks! that's not art!! They responded.

It was acutally not that long ago. I wonder if they still think the same? One of the UK's most famous living artists uses an Ipad now, at his great age. (Well I think he's still alive!)

I experienced it with The Sims a couple of years ago. I wrote a short comic illustrated with screen captures of scenes with the characters I created. I asked EA, that owns The Sims, permission to publish. They refused recalling all the pictures generated by the game belonged to EA and could not be used commercially.

For anyone interested in AI Art, there are a variety of programs out there.

sourceforge.net/software/ai-art-generators/

www.unite.ai/10-best-ai-art-generators/

The argument about AI art not being original because algorithms use other images to create from, often 1000s of them, is a bit like saying a book cannot be copyrighted because the writer did not create the individual words. It's also been common for decades people creating original art but cutting things out of newspapers and magazines and sticking them to a canvas, or even to furniture. Very few things are truly original because they have all been influenced by something.

It reminds me of an old saying. Copying one thing is plagiarism. Copying from a few, is research.

The thing is though. For as long as I can remember there's always been a worldwide agreement that as soon as something is created, it's automatically copyrighted, as long as you can prove the date it was created, and that it was by you. (Ignored by countries like China though ...) (It's not the same as a Patent.) I think in the USA a copyright infringement case cannot go to court unless its been officially been copyrighted, I do not think it's the same elsewhere, it just often better to have it officially copyrighted, costs about £25 I think, even though many say it's often not worth the paper it's printed on. Although in the USA I assume a private case can be heard, as long as you can afford the lawyers!