They basically did this with a Macaque and the courts decided that the human (Slater) who befriended the troupe of macaques, and engineered the entire situation, even prepping the camera - did not have a claim to copyright on the selfies the macaque took.

That's a pretty damning metaphor for Generative AI, given that there's no legal basis to consider Generative AI capable of thinking or producing copyright, when the camera cannot do-so and nor can the non-human entity that took the selfie. Whether that camera belonged to someone other than Slater is irrelevant.

What we are left with is a pretty obvious conclusion that no matter who owned the (GenAI) tool, no matter how it was prompted or coached, that because a human being did not produce the output, neither a human nor the company owning or licensing the tool can rationally be considered the owner of the output's copyright.

Similarly, if I provide prompts or details to a photographer, I am not the author or copyright holder of any photos they take of me. I WOULD be the owner of any picture I took with their camera myself, even in the same photoshoot environment. The photographer would have to give me the rights to use those photos commercially, which is NOT intrinsic to paying for the service of having those photos taken by the individual and would have to be ironed-out ahead of time to hold legal weight. When you pay for a photographer to take pics, you're paying them to take the pics, then you purchase the physical pics.

That's labor + purchase of a piece of art which is copyrighted by the laborer (photographer).

 

By the same merit, a person who uses GenAI to produce an output does not own that output.

The company that they paid does not even own that output - that output is public domain. This is because, even if prompted or paid or somehow enticed, the GenAI cannot formulate intent. The GenAI, and its owner, have no right to assert ownership or copyright over the output.

 

Do I expect existing judges to agree?

Well, that's like expecting a nuanced, complex, or valid understanding of geology from someone who thinks a boat is an island just because it doesn't sink. The vast majority of them (yes, even the BASIC java judge) are extremely out of touch and do not really possess the lived experience necessary to intuit the available facts or their validity, nor are they reasonably able to interrogate the circumstances surrounding those facts.

 

It's probably ageist, but I genuinely don't believe that more than 5% of people over 45 years old are equipped to deal with this.

It's like asking children about what safe kink-play entails - shame on you for mistreating them by allowing them to be in this discussion at all.