This was a Style Transfer AI - it takes a source image and recreates it in the style of a painter.

In this case, the person both took the photo that the style was transferred to, and selected the style and a variety of variables. The US Copyright office still felt that his contribution was not distinguishable from the work that the AI did.

I'll note that this is very US specific - there are a lot of counter-examples of other countries allowing for the copyright of work like this, including the EU, UK, Canada, India, etc.