The photo you see above of a spectacular post-dawn red sky is the scene that confronted me early on Monday morning when I opened my front door. It took my breath away!

I captured the scene with a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 foldable smartphone and posted the photo to Instagram.

But that photo is actually not the same as the photo above.

The photo here is a subsequent enhancement of the original photo, known as a “stylized photo,” automatically created by Google Photos. Or, rather, the artificial intelligence at the back end is the AI image generator.

The original photo below is what I posted to Instagram.

I suppose it’s because I’ve been thinking a lot recently about AI-generated images and art works that prompted further thoughts in relation to these two images.

Who is the creator of the stylized photo? It wasn’t me – I created the original posted to Instagram from which Google Photos’ AI created the second one, unprompted by me.

So the AI is the creator? If so, who owns the copyright? Perhaps this would be regarded as a deriviative work, so the creator of the original work (me) is the copyright owner? Perhaps this use would be covered under the Creative Commons license that governs copyright and usage permissions on this website?

Many questions that can’t really be answered satisfactorily yet.