Yes, the protection of the software and the images it creates are separate, but that’s missing the point. What protections the software does or doesn’t have are irrelevant to the question of whether or not the images are covered. By developing the software, he determines how it functions, which influences the final product that it outputs. That would still be the case even if the software weren’t covered by IP of any kind at all.

Howell wrote that copyright has never been granted to work that was “absent any guiding human hand,”

Plaintiff develops and owns computer programs he describes as having “artificial intelligence” (“AI”) capable of generating original pieces of visual art, akin to the output of a human artist.

If he developed the program, that sure sounds like a “guiding human hand” to me. I think his real mistake was trying to claim it as a work for hire with the AI as the author, rather than it just being a tool.