I personally think "abusing" copyright is too strong of a word here. The key test on whether this sort of work is copyright worthy is the "threshold of originality" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality). I can see it possible to argue this passed the threshold for the monkey selfie case (obviously that's debatable, and the person was not successful, but it is not a completely outrageous argument in my opinion).
It's definitely a murky area of copyright law, and one I can see increasingly getting muddier as art becomes more and more machine assisted.
Threshold of originality is not the issue here. That's more applicable to things like security camera footage. 17 USC ยง102(a) confines copyright to "works of authorship." Without an author, there is no copyright. To date, only natural persons and corporations have been held to be authors.
