The prompt is a literary work independent of the system processing it. If the text is sufficiently elaborate, it is certainly copyright able. But the resulting image is still a different affair.

That sounds to me like a recipe. Recipes their interaction with copyright are well-established, legally speaking, in the United States.

Their interaction being they are in no way copyrightable because they are functional, not creative expressions. That's part of why every recipe has a dramatic story, so they can have a clear copyright case if copied wholesale.

Is that really the reason for these stories? I only know about them from memes, and looked it up when I first read about it. In my language this trend hasn't caught on yet, thankfully. I always chalked it up to cultural differences (and judged Americans a little bit for it tbh, since the idea of integrating a story into a recipe sounds rather insane).

>Is that really the reason for these stories?

No, it's more about ads and SEO and the fact that a lot of people like the touchy feely aspect of the stories and that causes them to engage with the site for longer, leaving their own comments and returning to the site and such.

It is (or used to be) for SEO. Google Search loves walls of "relevant" text and will punish recipe sites that get right to the point.

It’s also to add vertical height so you see more ads on your way to the recipe.

It's more like a set of numbers since the prompt is just an interface that gets tokenized.

It would be like saying a DJ's equalizer settings are copyrightable.

You just stated how an AI generated image should be copyrightable. You should be able to own the copyright to all the configuration settings. If those settings then can be transformed to a 100% deterministic image (true, since you provide the seed) then I don't see how this is different than developing a photo negative film and transferring it to paper.

> This would mean I could copyright "man holding apple".

I think this is true today. You can have copyright on this phrase, just consider if it were the title of a song or poem.

> I think this is true today. You can have copyright on this phrase, just consider if it were the title of a song or poem.

That is not true today. You don't get a copyright on a phrase in particular if it was the title of a poem or song. For example:

"There's something in the way she moves" by James Taylor[1]

and "Something" by the Beatles[2] which starts with the same line.

James has the copyright over his song called "There's something in the way she moves" [3] and George Harrison's estate has the copyright over the one he wrote with the same title even though he probably copied it from James Taylor.

[1] https://youtu.be/p0FJUVo-BaM?si=fGR-TOim_8FS8rkO

[2] https://youtu.be/UelDrZ1aFeY?si=UG8c-cgfpgyH3I9n

[3] Which was the first one fwiw. He thinks because he signed to "Apple Records" (the Beatles' label) they heard his one when he recorded it before it was released and that maybe gave George Harrison the idea for the line.

I'm confused, are they both entitled to their copyright? (which I think should be the case)

They have copyright oveer their respective songs, not the phrase, so it disproves your statement that you can have copyright over a phase. It can be a trademark but not be copyrighted