Maybe it’s not the AI we should get rid of but patents?
Given the AI's output using the trained weights of its models were in part deduced using their works as training examples, one could argue that creators of the example pictures should have some portion of rights on any output from the AI Model... maybe...
As evaluated by a patent office with a profit motive to find it non-obvious. No, I'm not joking. USPTO is funded entirely from fees.
Of course, once you've exhausted your two rounds of rejection with them, you have to pay again for another two, or appeal it, so they make money arguing with you, too. But yeah, probably more $$$ to issue you some worthless government paper.
What if it can only be produced by the tool through a highly nontrivial prompt? Prompt engineering is already a field, and there are already people selling prompts.
Maybe models like dall-e are going to be considered a new kind of very high level programming language. Just because you can obtain a certain result with a C compiler (given some specific "prompt" - that is, the C source code) it doesn't mean the result isn't novel.
With the proviso that things may have changed in the last 6 years when I haven't been working in patents:
Your experience is not representative. While in Patent Litigation at Google, I looked at literally hundreds of prosecution histories, and an obviousness rejection figured in almost 100% of them. That's much more common that an anticipation rejection, i.e. ONE reference.
And any lawyer will tell you that if they allow your application on the first try, you didn't ask for enough.
If you tell us the numbers of the patents you worked on, I can look up the histories. Or you can, if you know that one weird trick :)
(Actually, it's several weird tricks.)
The PTO rejects; the lawyers argue & amend; the PTO rejects again making it Final. But it's not Final! You can pay for another go-around.
What you think of as a "rejection" is really Abandonment. They keep rejecting, and finally the lawyers give up. They hate doing that, because they're getting paid to get you something.