As far as I know, courts have basically decided that things need to be created by a person first and foremost, not by, say, a monkey (and yes there was an attempt to copyright a monkey selfie). In the flipped pixel example I personally classified as art, there was a lot more transformation than simply flipping a pixel, to the point where it hopefully transformed the original into having a new and unique intent.

You could theoretically make a piece of art where generative AI in a similar way, but it’s the human element of composition that would make it art (or, at the very least, something novel and not just regurgitated). In theory, you could pull all of the works of a single comic artist, input it into generative AI and do the exact same thing, making a mural of This Is Not Wally Wood or something.

But hopping onto a generative AI that’s been trained with the works of countless artists (and by no other AI networks, because AI degenerates when it trains itself) and simply typing in a phrase… Well, at that point it’s closer to pushing a button on a machine that flicks paint onto a canvas, and you didn’t make the machine, and it’s used by thousands of other people everyday. Only so much paint flicking can be done before it’s not particularly interesting or unique.

I think somebody made a relatively short (to me) video about whether AI art is even art…