I think there is some confusion about the copyright rules surrounding AI-generated work. The article listed above says that an AI cannot be listed as a copyright holder, which is what Steven Thaler’s approach is. He’s claiming that his AI called the “Creativity Machine” created the art without human input and the result should be copyrightable to the AI. Obviously, the Copyright office disagrees and has declared that without human input it cannot be copyrighted.
But that doesn’t mean AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted.
The AI that Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALLE create does involve human input through text. And while each AI tool differs in copyright/commercial rules, the “icon maker” linked here is using midjourney. And because midjourney states that paid users “own all Assets you create with the services” the icon maker would be considered the copyright holder of those images.
Here’s some good reading material to better understand what the copyright situation is for AI at the moment.
The Verge Article the Smithsonian Article Poorly Paraphrased
The actual Copyright Ruling for Thaler’s AI.
Breaks down the document above with less legalese