There are “AI artists” claiming “prompt engineering” is a skill that should give them copyright over the works the image generator produces, so this is not surprising in the slightest.
In the US, copyright is assigned to whoever takes a photograph. Pushing a button on your phone isn’t much work at all and yet the courts think that’s enough effort to allow someone to claim copyright over the work. So I don’t think the claim that the prompting, inpainting etc. required to generate an AI imagine isn’t “enough” work for someone to claim copyright doesn’t really hold water.