But the treatment of photographs in the decision fits your description. The photographer sets up the environment that allowed the image to exist but it’s the camera that makes the image. The judge held that was protectable because the image represents the human’s mental conception of the scene. It’s not a ridiculous stretch to consider AI to be merely a camera for the prompt-writer’s mental conception. I am certain this argument has been or will be tried in court. The IP owner industry is far from done litigating this topic.