Copyrights exist as an incentive for humans to bring new works into being. They are not incentives to use any particular tools to bring those new works into being.
In my opinion, under this rubric, the extent a computer-generated work can be copyrighted (or be seen as transformational enough to be fair use) would depend on the amount of effort a human put into iterating that specific piece of work.
And even then whether or not Andy Warhol's paintings are copyrightable, or are unauthorized copies of copyrighted work, is still going through the courts.
> When the first spreadsheet came out it was very much a similar process.
Processes have never been copyrightable. A particular implementation can be patented, but copyright is an entirely different form of intellectual property.
Agreed a process cannot be copyrighted. Unfortunately, neither can a 'style', and to my knowledge the amount of 'work' that went into a piece doesn't necessarily effect copyright to my knowledge. I could setup a camera facing outside my window and press the button (with my finger to keep things simpler) every 10 seconds or so for several hours. No framing, thought of subject matter, lighting, just press the button, i.e. very little 'work'. At the end I would have a number of images that I hold copyright too. Legally (to my knowledge), they would have no greater or lesser legal protection then a shot I took on the top of mount Everest, with great care, framing subject, at a certain time of day, showing all my mastery of photographic arts (i.e. lots of work).
Sadly, I think artists have a better chance trying to limit their works inclusion in the datasets then making any claim as far as how easy it is to use AI. It likely, will fall along web scraping cases, which I'm not knowledgeable enough to say one way or another. However, it doesn't bode well that I can put an artists name into google image and see several examples of their work, this feels like public access and to my laymans mind would fall under fair use.
The issue with web-scraping is... wait for it... copying
The problem here is... copying! AI models aren't just taking the "style" from works, they are directly copying the works because they do not have an understanding of what style is because they are computer algorithms that are designed to generate pixel data based upon other inputs.
In my opinion, under this rubric, the extent a computer-generated work can be copyrighted (or be seen as transformational enough to be fair use) would depend on the amount of effort a human put into iterating that specific piece of work.
And even then whether or not Andy Warhol's paintings are copyrightable, or are unauthorized copies of copyrighted work, is still going through the courts.
> When the first spreadsheet came out it was very much a similar process.
Processes have never been copyrightable. A particular implementation can be patented, but copyright is an entirely different form of intellectual property.