More and more people are submitting AI-generated images for contests and commercial use, but how to determine the “originality” of these images has always been a gray area. The core debate is: does the prompt you type, the endless tweaking of parameters, and the selection process count as your intellectual input? Some people think clicking a mouse a few times to generate an image doesn’t make it original, while others argue that from the initial idea to countless iterations and selections, human decision-making is involved throughout.
I lean toward the latter, but only if you’re really deeply involved—not just tossing out a random prompt and letting the model do all the work.
This issue affects whether AI creations can be properly protected in the future and whether they can be used commercially. I get asked about it all the time when teaching students. Getting the standards sorted out sooner would be a good thing for people who take their work seriously.