It's completely relevant. In both cases, you are describing what image you want created.
The fact that you are describing it to a human isn't materially different from the fact that you're describing it to an AI. I mean, heck, this has been the exact argument people have used about why it's OK to train an AI on copyrighted material -- that it's just like a human "learning" from the image. And now comparisons with a human aren't allowed? You can't have it both ways, you can't argue that a generative AI isn't any materially different from a human when it's imitating or learning from a work, but that using that AI suddenly puts the prompter in a completely brand new category of copyright. :)
And we're really talking about the prompter here, not the AI. Focusing specifically on the prompter, what precedent do we have in copyright law that describing the image you want created is a creative act? None, as far as I can see. And we have a ton of precedent that it's not a creative act, ie the entire history of copyright policy around prompting/directing. Nobody argues that directing a creative process means you inherently get copyright over the result.
It think the parent's point here could be rephrased like this:
Copyright law treats "involved a human" vs. "involved a machine" as fundamentally different just because humans are special-cased, not due to any deeper reason. Just by fiat.
The law gives special consideration to humans "just because". Therefore, if one situation involves a human in a particular role and another situation involves a machine, then there is no useful analogy to be drawn -- as far as the law is concerned. Even if the analogy makes perfect sense to you and me, the law treats humans and machines as fundamentally different, so all bets are off.
The fact that you are describing it to a human isn't materially different from the fact that you're describing it to an AI. I mean, heck, this has been the exact argument people have used about why it's OK to train an AI on copyrighted material -- that it's just like a human "learning" from the image. And now comparisons with a human aren't allowed? You can't have it both ways, you can't argue that a generative AI isn't any materially different from a human when it's imitating or learning from a work, but that using that AI suddenly puts the prompter in a completely brand new category of copyright. :)
And we're really talking about the prompter here, not the AI. Focusing specifically on the prompter, what precedent do we have in copyright law that describing the image you want created is a creative act? None, as far as I can see. And we have a ton of precedent that it's not a creative act, ie the entire history of copyright policy around prompting/directing. Nobody argues that directing a creative process means you inherently get copyright over the result.