To what degree do you consider AI involvement to be the deal-breaker.

In one sentence, when you're editing the AI's work rather than the AI editing your's, you can't claim the original work as your's.

My phone uses something arbitrarily akin to generative AI to sharpen photos. If I take a photo with my phone of something novel, should I be able to copywrite that photo?

This being an example if the former... The AI is sharpening your photo that you took.

If I use an AI generated image and spend 24 hours manually tweaking and modifying it, do I have a right to copywrite?

Assuming it was transformative enough, I'm sure you could copyright your derivative work, but you couldn't then directly copyright what the AI generated.

If I use an LLM to synthesize an idea that I then use to organically create art, is it lesser art?

No, because like an artist taking requests, the AI is providing the prompt. You'd be the one drawing the art piece, putting in the majority of the creative effort.

It all seems so arbitrary at this point. It’s like a typist in 2005 arguing that digital word processors shouldn’t be used to create copywritable art, as it takes significantly less work.

Excuse my French, but how in the flying fuck is that the same thing?

Whether you write a document on a typewriter or keyboard, you're still the one directly deciding what words go on that page, and in what order. Every creative decision it is possible to make, you make.

When an AI writes for you based on prompts, you decide almost none of that. You give it a synopsis and it writes the whole script, essay, whatever for you.

There's a huge difference between those things! How is it so hard to grasp that?