Artificial Creativity systems and software children

Just read an article on David Cope and his computer generated music. (This is such an understatement)

http://www.slate.com/id/2254232

Now I have found an article on him on wikipedia ( which is where I should have stared anyway) which gives a much better background.
This reminds me of an article I read on software used to generate origional images. Even the background on the creator has echos. Sort of a "genius builds artificial child to help with creative process then lives off its success" spin.

This is a link to information about AARON the image creation software.(Which now has a download... nice. )
http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/
I can't find the original article. I think it was in a copy of Wired back in the day.

Anyway, the common theme I was seeing was the way the subject was presented. That these special purpose pieces of software, once they started doing something creative, were personified as some sort of "child" of the creator. I know its not explicit, but its still the impression I took away from reading the articles. 

I wonder if this is the easiest way to communicate these concepts to the reading public? Obviously the creators feel some sense of ownership and creation about their tools that they have spent so much time and effort to build. But why are they not seen as a creator with a really cool tool that extends their personal ability and reach?  Surely the macros and tools I write do not have a life of their own. (Although some of them certainly generate a lot of "social activity" as it were.) But they are just extensions of their users ability. I guess once the tool starts to operate fairly automatically with little (new) input from the creator, it has crossed some threshold. It certainly becomes an encapsulated thing that does not need the creator to function and can be "triggered" by anyone.

However as the tool contains a huge library of content and encoded knowledge from the creator; just because its turned on by someone else, do they get to claim its output as a product of their effort? Does a person who uses a knife get to claim the product of using the knife is a product of their effort? Even if the knife is a product of a huge amount of cleaver design and work hours by someone else?  It's a clear line when the tool is a "dumb" thing that extends the ability of the user but does not enhance it beyond what they could achieve in other ways.  But when the tool not only extends the users ability but supplements it in ways that the user could not otherwise achieve without either hiring the original creator of the tool... then its a more complex case.

I would debate that much of the product of the tool is still more closely related to the tools creator than to the user of the tool. But that begins to blur the line between intellectual property and real property.Conceptually, when the tool itself changed hands, so did some right to the intellectual property encoded in the tool. (Obviously, as this is the case with any software) however it becomes much more emotive when that IP is what has hitherto been seen as some "magical" ability to be "creative". Another of those special properties that people use to try to differentiate themselves from "lower life forms". 

But then again, should the tool be identified somehow as being autonomous? Having an existence apart from its creator? Certainly if it continues to collect more information and evolves beyond its creator.  But what if there are some limitations that were encoded intentionally or unintentionally by its creators that it cannot evolve past? Or are these just a failure in some way?