The Copyright Office asked him to provide them with an unedited version of the image generated by Midjourney in order to determine how much (human) work went into the final version.
Allen refused to provide them with an unedited version, so the Copyright Office had no way to verify how much or how little work was actually done by the artist compared to work that was done by the AI, so they had to assume that the vast majority of the work was done without any human artistic contribution.
They were essentially forced to reject his copyright application because he refused to provide evidence that he actually did any kind of creative artistic work.
This wasn’t a court case.
This was a copyright application.
The Copyright Office asked him to provide them with an unedited version of the image generated by Midjourney in order to determine how much (human) work went into the final version.
Allen refused to provide them with an unedited version, so the Copyright Office had no way to verify how much or how little work was actually done by the artist compared to work that was done by the AI, so they had to assume that the vast majority of the work was done without any human artistic contribution.
They were essentially forced to reject his copyright application because he refused to provide evidence that he actually did any kind of creative artistic work.