The public domain is not a place. A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner.

invalidate the contract between the user.

Why do you keep bringing this up? Nobody else here cares and this claim isn't in dispute - open source software can and is licensed all the time. That doesn't change your initial claims about the output from Generative AI not being able to be held under copyright.

The only two examples in the text were AI Generated Images.

Man, it sure is weird how you ignore that they explicitly clarify that this applies to generated text too:

If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user.

God this is satisfying. Thank you for being like this.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Being in the public domain means being there in perpetuity. The Copyright Office is rejecting generated image applications while asking for future legislature to clarify.

Do not use slop code.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

Being in the public domain means being there in perpetuity.

Nope!

One of its effects is to give United States copyright protection to foreign works that had previously been in the public domain in the United States.

It's uncommon but public domain works can absolutely have their copyright restored.