[otakucode]

People are allowed to copyright things that they used tools to create. "Artificial Intelligence" is a tool. The first word should be a big hint. Just like if you trained an AI to murder people it would be a weapon, it can be a paintbrush or a typewriter.

This does promise to be more interesting, though. Humans, especially when it comes to art, are extremely (maybe even biologically) invested in the incorrect idea of 'essentialism'. People believe that objects have their history somehow attached to them. It's the reason the Ship of Theseus riddle perplexes people. If you replace every piece of a ship over time, is it still the same ship? It's a nonsensical question. It's a ship. There is no such thing as some separate identity which sets it apart as "the same" from one point in time to another. The fiction we invent to make the world make sense to us might be unavoidable in our minds, but it is nonetheless fiction. And when it comes to art, the fiction of something being "human made" as opposed to "AI made" will definitely play a large role in the future. At least as large a role as whether the Mona Lisa is "an original" or "a forgery". This notion that an objects history can have meaning itself, separate from the atoms and molecules of the object itself, is largely where the "value" of art lies, certainly in collectible artworks and "originals".