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 necessaril

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. ref: https://www.thelegalartist.com/blog/you-cant-copyright-style https://www.thelegalartist.com/blog/you-cant-copyright-style