A bit more like a sampler than a xerox machine... but sampling laws got clarified eventually too!

That form of AI has already been invented long ago, it's called simply Copy & Paste.

GPT combines prompt, context and knowledge, it selects and adapts code. It even does problem solving: above average human rating on easy problems and 20% over humans on medium level problems. When did the xerox or parrot for that matter do that?

If you think copy and paste is artificial intelligence then there probably isn't much of a discussion to be had here.

Yes, very smart and talented people have released ground breaking and amazing tools leveraging massively trained ML models. The model is not problem solving or intelligent in any sense of the word (take it from oai: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt)

"ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers..."

To be back on topic, I don't think some sweaty dude from the internet should be issued a copyright for typing "Minnie Mouse wearing a pikachu t-shirt!" into DALL-E and submitting the resulting image.

At the same time, I read a post like this one: https://andys.page/posts/how-to-draw and I have really no objection to copyright being assigned. I think the difference is the human authorship, and I think the Copyright Office has made a pretty good first swag.