Add one manual detail here and there on the image, they will have copyright protection.

This position statement makes it clear that only the manual details themselves merit protection, the base image itself must be disclaimed from the copyright registration. It would be fraud to attempt otherwise.

If I use controlnet and openpose to generate a character in the exact pose that I want - what does count as a manual detail then?

So with some custom LoRAs to maintain consistent appearance of characters and controlnet/openpose to pose characters exactly like I want I could make a comic book.

Would my work be copyrightable then?

I’ve been noticing my workflow in Automatic1111 basically always ends up taking an hour. I like to compare it to going to a weird shoreline filled with strange objects, picking out the “shells” I like the most, then taking them home, cleaning them up, and arranging them in a way I think looks pretty.

At some point I’m making something artistic. My friends think I’ve got a keen eye on what looks cool so I’ve been improving by leaps and bounds even though strictly speaking I’m not drawing anything? I’m just really good at being descriptive and inpainting the weird parts.

I was expecting this argument.

I'm sure they're happy to register copyright on a text you wrote yourself and used your imagination on—a prompt. I agree this has creative input on the artist's part and can be tricky to get right. Similarly, if you do significant edits to the result, I'd assume this ought to continue to legally function just like photo editing functioned before AI-generated images.

They're just saying they're not going to copyright what you didn't actually paint or decide on (like the words in each sentence or how to rhyme them, as in their example).

I think the comparison to photography or electronic music is apt.

If you just open up Garage Band and click a couple of times to enable loop "autofill" chords / rhythm, should that be copyrightable? I'd say probably not; but if you spent a bunch of time tweaking and honing all the parameters to get something unique and interesting, I'd say they should. Should the person then only get the copyright on the Garage Band parameters, but not on the resulting output audio?

Or consider the amount of creativity that goes into most photographs -- it's often nothing more than deciding to take a picture. And yet you have an implicit copyright on every photograph in your phone, just for having made the decision to pick up your phone and click.

Or consider the Copyright Office's comparison to giving instructions to an artist. Yes, if you just said to an artist, "Draw a picture of the Eiffel tower", then the artist should own the copyright. But if you worked closely together with the artist, iterating over dozens of designs and sketches, giving feedback and direction on the creative decisions, then personally I think you should share in the copyright. (Not sure what the law is in this case.)

Similarly, if you spend an hour iterating through dozens of prompts to get the output of a generated image exactly the way you want it, then you're an artist and should be able to get a copyright on that image.