terryMc Loc: Arizona's White Mountains

magnetoman Loc: Purbeck, Dorset, UK

No, it’s an image - an image could be a photograph, a painting or an AI creation. To view an image it does not need to be a photograph.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Once again a few simple definitions would save us from pages of theorising, opinionating and conjecturing (plus the occasional rant). This is what Wikipedia has to say about photography:-

Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.

There are many ways to create images, but if it doesn't involve recording light, it's not photography.

If you add to or modify a photograph, does it stop being a photograph? No, it becomes a modified photograph. Every photograph that's ever existed has been modified (i.e. processed) in one way or another. In other words there's nothing for purists to become pedantic about.

Mac Loc: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia now Hernando Co. Fl.

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

My camera takes a photograph of what is there. Post processing shows you what I saw

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Light which is analog hits a sensor that is the difference.
Wet plate, roll film, digital sensor all need light.
AI needs only 1s and 0s.

Old Coot

Of course they do. If there is room for the "Attic" then why not AI

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

AI won't even need us pretty soon... " Sorry Dave, I can't do that ". What folks don't realize is that the photography of OLD is GONE... KAPUT ! Get over it... The ship has already sailed... and most of us do not even know its departed or the destination.

Horseart Loc: Alabama

I know a girl who is using OTHER ARTIST'S and OTHER PHOTOGRAPHER'S pictures, adding things to them with AI, saying they are her "PAINTINGS"....and selling them as such. Sorry, they will be a lot of fun for some but to say you "painted" them IS a lie. Why not just say "Made with AI"? I will never use it because I enjoy REALLY painting and REALLY shooting my own pictures.

MJPerini

This is a door that opened when photoshop was born. Some degree of creative manipulation for artistic intent has been part of the photographic process from the very beginning. Photoshop extended that, and now AI allows unknown 'collaborators' to add things that could never have been captured by the photographer.
It is neither good or bad in and of itself, and can be used creatively to make compositions that never existed.
Similar to painting. There used to be a saying that marked the deciding line between Painting and Photography.....
"The Artist Adds, the photographer subtracts" because one starts with a blank canvass the other starts with a cluttered world and chooses what aspect to show.
That is clearly no longer true. Of course we have long had Photo-illustration and the composites and they were always somewhat special not withstanding that Jerry Uelsmann and others brought them to high Art with much difficulty.
The only sense in which AI is different is that , at least in some cases, is authorship. When Jerry Ulesmann and others used multiple disparate sources to compose an image, they were the author of all of the parts. If you use AI to replace a sky with one from a bunch of stock photos, you are no longer the author of your entire work. You do not even necessarily know if the cloud formation you choose could have occurred in the geography of the rest of the photograph.
That is not necessarily a bad thing, but in my view should be acknowledged.
That being said, we cannot stop technology. Drawing ever more arbitrary boundaries around non- news or documentary photography is a fools errand.
So make honest work that you believe in, describe it accurately and fairly, and put it out there.
Don't think the world needs more rules.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Aside from the fact that the algorithms in a camera are basically "if <parameter> is set, do this", there is no variation as would be with true AI. AI based on a certain set of conditions, always repeating the same result, is not AI. AI will give you different results at different times, based on what and the order you gave it the information. The camera algorithms do not do that.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

If you take a shot with a camera it is a photograph, if you create an image on a computer it is graphic art, if you merge the two it is a composite, but it is only a photograph if the two merged images were both taken with a camera, otherwise it is graphic art. I would say graphic art does not belong on a photography forum but a composite of two images taken with a camera would belong on a photography forum. But things are changing in the photo world...

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

I'm part of the "SOOC crowd"! Only I call it 90% SOOC! And I'm not going crazy, although some folks think I'm already there! As long as AI is identified as AI up front, I have no problems with it. It is NOT photography, but it is, or can be, art! If done well. And post processing falls somewhere in between. There, I've said it! Bring out the tar and feathers!!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Perception...

Photo C = Aspects of Photo A + aspects of Photo B
still a photo.
My perception.

jaredjacobson

Interior design is an art form even if the designer did none of the work actually assembling the room. AI can be a non-human art form if the computer creates random images with no input from a human and autonomously selects and posts them online for your viewing enjoyment.