There is a difference between the concept of a computer being a "clever pencil", which you are referring to, and the computer generating weapons and gear to gen

There is a difference between the concept of a computer being a "clever pencil", which you are referring to, and the computer generating weapons and gear to generate a drop from a selection of "$ELEMENT $LEVEL $WEAPON $MODIFIER" (e.g. fiery epic hammer of orc skull crushing) which is equivalent to generating all of them (not copyrightable). Now, the individual visual components of the weapons could have a copyright but the computationally assemblaged work based on the components would not because they've just run a job to "generate all the permutations". For something like No Man's Sky, which is extremely procedurally generated I reckon it's very grey and they could try to make a case but the actual world they generated for people to play in would not be protected by copright. I don't think it's well tested in court. In the case of the monkeys the hat, the basemonkey, and sunglasses could have a copyright but the assembled monkeys generated by a computer with no creativity would not. But it's a derivative work of things with copyright so that aspect becomes super grey. The UK government issued a call for views to figure this area out and try to legislate it. Hopefully something useful comes of it. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intelligence-and-intellectual-property-call-for-views/artificial-intelligence-call-for-views-copyright-and-related-rights https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intel...