The headline doesn’t seem to be what actually happened. The filer was arguing that the ai created the work on its own as a work for hire and thus the ai was the author with the computer scientist merely being the owner of the copyright as it was made for hire. I don’t think the argument that ai is a tool and the human operating it is the author was considered because the filer explicitly didn’t want to consider it.

In the review being appealed here (https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/...). It makes it clear that the computer scientist doing the filing was trying to argue this was a work made for hire with the author being the computer. They wanted to argue that copyright can be assigned to non humans, but that just isn’t how the law works. The summary makes it clear early that it’s just taking their word that the work had no human input and was thus purely the creation of the computer. This seems to be a a better article https://www.millernash.com/industry-news/paradise-denied-cop....