> But the algorithm isn’t collaborating, every possible outcome is fixed when the algorithm is finalized and users can’t actually change the possibilities.
But that actually reinforces the idea that all of the creative work is in the prompt, everything else is purely mechanical process implementing the command given by the prompt. Arguably, its analogous to saying that a programmer can copyright the prompt but not the resulting image is like saying I can copyright source code, but can have no copyright on the output of the compiler.
Compilers don’t create a new copyright the output is covered as a derivative work.
However, derivative works have clear limitations and the output of a chat program doesn’t qualify any more than you own the copyright of what someone says when you interview them.
Put another way you don’t own the copyright on the specific shape of a tree as a sculpture because you selected its species when you planted it.
> Compilers don’t create a new copyright the output is covered as a derivative work.
A derivative work is a separate work that, considered apart from the one it is derived from, separately has the required creative input to be a copyrightable work, and it does, in fact, have a separate copyright from the original (creating derivative works is an exclusive, but licensable, right of the copyright holder of the original, but the copyright of a derivative is separate.)
I don’t know if that distinction was intended as a limitation, “sound recording” is listed as a derivative work in the statute. It also clarifies that “Copies” are material objects, other than phonorecords
So, mechanical transformation such as rendering a webpage at 150% scale is seemingly a derivative work even if there isn’t any creativity in the process.
But that actually reinforces the idea that all of the creative work is in the prompt, everything else is purely mechanical process implementing the command given by the prompt. Arguably, its analogous to saying that a programmer can copyright the prompt but not the resulting image is like saying I can copyright source code, but can have no copyright on the output of the compiler.