Who is the author of AI-created paintings?

As paintings created by artificial intelligence pop up around the world and are being increasingly recognized as art, a fundamental question emerges: who is the author of these artworks?

When an AI-generated painting of Edmond Belamy was auctioned at Christie's last year, the artist's signature was an algebraic formula that defined the algorithm which drew the painting, which seems to imply that the algorithm is the true author.

But in the eyes of Qiu Zhijie, an artist and professor at China's Central Academy of Fine Arts, three contributors should be given credit - the AI model, the company that develops it and those involved in identifying what are excellent paintings.