There are tools that are being used to attempt to detect if a piece of work is AI-generated. If those tools say something was, it’s then on you to prove that you hand-created it.

They don’t work. It’s total bunk.

Even some artists are already having issues because things “look” AI-generated.

Exactly. See above. No one can (confidently) tell which is which. There’s just educated guessing.

Right now, AI-generated works aren’t copyrightable. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ai-generator-art-text-us-copyright-policy-1234661683/ This means you can not copyright the works produced by AI.

…

So right now, common AI is producing works that are potentially copyright-infringing works and are unable to be copyrighted themselves.

This kind of judgement is pure symbolic politics, because it’s completely unenforceable and I’m confused why you didn’t mention it. No one can prove if a piece of art is AI made and no one has to admit it. So yes, AI art can be copyrighted, just not officially as AI art, but it certainly will be and likely already is as long as there’s a human ‘stand in’.

There’s a huge gulf of difference between a matter of fact and a matter of law.

Half of a fuck-ton is still a lot. If they scale down their operational costs they can still run a very comfortable business for a long while on these kinds of numbers.