Thaler's assertion seems very short-sighted. If the program/system owns the copyright, who administers that? Is his software capable of granting licenses to allow the art to be published? How did he get permission from it to reproduce the work(s)? How does he even know that it wanted him to register the copyright with the Copyright Office? Perhaps it would prefer that the work was CCO/public domain.
I'm not just being snarky -- I think these are real questions that follow from saying that the system holds the copyright (and I am dubious that he has consistent answers to them).
I'm very much in your camp. Recognizing the personal sovereignty of what we currently call "AI" is pretty silly. How do we know the wants of said AI? Can it advocate for itself? The answers are pretty clearly "No, this AI has no wants or feelings".
I will be the first to fight for true AI to have right as a person, but these generative tools are just that: Generative tools. They have no continuance of memory, they have no sentience or sapience. We should be approaching the topic far more carefully than we are, to be on the lookout for those things, but the evidence points strongly in the opposite direction right now.
> We should be approaching the topic far more carefully
It's the major players in a billion dollar industry driving the conversation while also benefitting from the topic being approached as it is. I don't see a way for it to go the "right" direction while that's the case.
I'm not just being snarky -- I think these are real questions that follow from saying that the system holds the copyright (and I am dubious that he has consistent answers to them).