The convergence of AI with the smartphone continues. Google just announced a new Pixel 9 series camera, with AI features, including a text-to-image editing feature that enables you to Reimagine your photos using text prompts.
The breakdown of such an image can be written as the following formula:
Your photo + Reimagine elements using AI = new composition for photo containing real + AI
The convergence of generative AI in smartphones will make it increasingly difficult to maintain the U.S. Copyright Office’s position of excluding AI-generated elements from copyright because they supposedly contain some element of randomness in their generation. Perhaps the Copyright Office would say that a person using Reimagine can copyright the original photograph taken, minus the AI-generated part added. But I think that ultimately that edited photograph qualifies as a work of authorship based on the selection and arrangement of elements.
Julian Chokkatu has an informative review of this feature on Wired.