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The situation today is that AI images are copyrighted (or not) just like any other images.
Given the power of the copyright industry, I doubt that this will be cut back. In the interest of society, it should be, but denying copyright to AI imagery is not the best place to do this.
The original intention of copyright was the same as that of patents: To encourage the creation of new works by making it possible to monetize them through licensing. AI images can be very expensive to make, depending on what goes into them. Without copyright on these images, we might miss out.
ETA: This purpose of copyright is given in the US Constitution (though it is older). US Americans could think about that. IP is property created to serve the public. That's the only justification for property to be found in that document.
Not that it really changes much of your larger point, but that's not really true. The original intention of copyright comes from the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 and the Statute of Anne 1710 and neither of those was intended to encourage the creation of new works. On the contrary, they were intended to discourage the creation of new works. The problem at the time is that people were printing too many new works, many of which were considered a threat to the monarchy and/or the church. Copyright forced all printers to be registered with the Stationers' Company initially (a crown-monitored guild) and later the crown itself, to aid in censorship and government control of the press.
The Statute of Anne 1710 gives this justification: [...]for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books.
There are many precursors, but I don't think they can be called copyright in the modern sense. All guilds had monopolies which they defended at the expense of society. It was a feature of feudalism that the elites sought to prevent change to preserve their positions.
But yes, copyright is the major remaining limitation on the freedom of the (printing) press.
(It's interesting how many of the demands to regulate AI are parallel to the controls on the printing press, in the first few centuries after its introduction in Europe.)
The purpose of copyright in the USA, and as far as I know in Brittain, yes.
But please remember that in much of the rest of the world copyright is a reaction to people, creators, getting in trouble over third party usage of their creations.
Leading to the idea that a creator should have the power to stop people from using their works for whatever the creator deems objectionable.
Not as far as I know. The continental European copyright-equivalent preserves feudal ideas.
Rulers granted monopolies to their cronies to allow them to extract money. These privileges were finally abandoned in the wake of the French Revolution. Ethical considerations aside, this was necessary to allow for industrialization/economic development. Except for "copyright", which is democratized by automatically granting it to everyone, rather than being a special favor. The continental patent system works much like the US one, granting a "mere" 20 year monopoly. Copyright duration is tied to the death of the author, showing its nature as a personal privilege.
Small wonder then that the US copyright industry has come to dominate. Unfortunately, it has leveraged this power for rent-seeking so that much of the harmful, European model was adopted in the US.
You are right, though, that the European model has no regard for public benefit but is quite concerned with the "honor" of the creator.
In Denmark the case surrounding "Nøddebo præstegård" caused copyright to be enacted.
I've noticed the theme come up in other countries, amongst these France, but I'll grant that I may have overestimated its importance by overfitting to prior knowledge.
Do you have more info on that case, please? It's fine if it's in danish.