I think you're missing something really obvious here. Piracy is not expressive content. You call it a game, and therefore it must be - but it's not. It's simply an illegal good. It doesn't have to serve any purpose. It cannot be bound by copyright, due to the illegal nature. The Morris Worm wasn't copyrightable content.
Something is not required to be expressive content, to be bound under law. That's not a requirement.
The law goes out of its way to not define what "a work" is. The US copyright system instead says "the material deposited constitutes copyrightable subject matter". A copyrightable thing is defined by being copyrightable. There's a logical loop there, allowing the law to define itself, as best makes sense. It leans on Common Law, not some definition that is written down.
"an AI-created work is likely either (1) a public domain work immediately upon creation and without a copyright owner capable of asserting rights or (2) a derivative work of the materials the AI tool was exposed to during training."
AI outputs aren't considered copyrighted, as there's no person responsible. The person has the right to copyright for the creations. A machine, does not. If the most substantial efforts involved are human, such as directly wielding a tool, then the person may incur copyright on the production. But an automated process, will not. As AI stands, the most substantial direction is not supplied by the person.
