In the US, the copyright office (as the article you link to says), has declined to define “meaningful” contribution. If you want to argue that the user doesn’t own it for incredibly trivial prompts, I won’t argue (though I consider that to be non-useful code).
Every developer I’ve seen use these tools has have engaged in a meaningful contribution: specific directions across multiple prompts, often (though not always) editing the code afterwards, manually running the code and promoting for changes, etc.
Until the courts, legislators, or the copyright office define something otherwise, I’m highly confident of my assertion. (Mostly because of the insane number of hours I’ve spent with counsel on this. And, as a disclaimer, since I am biased: I worked on Copilot and Google’s various AI assisted coding products as an SVP and VP.)
LLMs can definitely write programming languages. I used Gemini CLI (once it came, AI Studio before that) with Gemini 2.5 Pro to create one with Rust and LLVM:
This was completely vibe coded - I never had to edit the code, though it was very interactive. The whole thing tool less than a month of some evenings and weekends.
(Note: it’s ugly on purpose, as I’m playing with ideas around languages that LLMs would naturally be effective using.)
I’ve also experimented with using rust to create a new programming language where I vibe coded (eg never wrote myself). My opinion is that it’s quite capable with disciplined management.