I'm sure that "some say" lots of things that are right, wrong or indifferent. It matters little what "some say." But I guess that in 100 years, when you want a picture of your new baby, you will put a "prompt" in the computer and without a lens, a shutter, any light, or the faintest idea of what your child actually looks like, it will display a totally accurate image of him. After all, cameras are only found now in museums...

Everyone I have had this discussion with to date has the same argument: "This is the same as the invention of the digital camera."

"Painters said that photography was not art."

How is is that you cannot see the dissimilarity in these "advances in technology? How can you not see that when you put words words into a computer which then manufactures an image for you, that you are not creating anything, it's all in the computer? You don't even know what it is going to come out until you see it, then you say "I created that. That is my art."

No, you did not.

When I take a camera out, even if I leave the settings on auto, I go to real place, analyze the light, determine a composition, record the scene, develop the images and (maybe) print them. I don't say to the computer "Go to Grand Canyon, get this picture in this light with this foreground, etc." and then say I created this image of the Grand Canyon. It's not the Grand Canyon, it's a fantasy, and you did nothing to make it appear as it is.

I'll bet that if you spoke to someone in the 16th century about air travel they would have thought you were delusional. The airplane was an advancement in technology, so does that mean that this AI is the same as the airplane, just another technological advance? Comparing (or contrasting) it to the invention of the camera is no less ridiculous, they are completely different things.

Yes --- In the greater sense, nothing is being created by the current "state-of-the-art". Though technologically remarkable, and improving rapidly, something different is happening - and being overlooked, I fear, in many quite emotional responses. As I understand it, the computer creating "AI Images" is, directed by verbal/written instructions, gathering from a HUGE compilation of actual pictures of everything imaginable, selected images, then to be combined in the prescribed manner, thus producing an end result. As a photographic file type, it could be edited - if desired - by postprocessing software. But is it "art"? - really depends on individual interpretation!!!

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

How is AI going to produce photos of your granddaughter's 1st birthday party? How is AI going to produce a photo of your 98-year old grandmother on her front porch? How is AI going to capture any special moment that is gone in an instant, never to be seen again? The list of possibilities goes on and on.

AI may be able to produce an image of a vase and flowers that is as good or maybe even better than a photograph and may even be indistinguishable from it. Neither one is real; they are both interpretations of a light source and reflection.

Eventually, perhaps, AI will be able to do all of those things when it can read minds. When that happens the human race is lost anyway.

I think it is, or will be, the same as it is with a camera. Right now using a camera you can create art but you can also create documentaries or historical recordings, which are certainly not "art." If AI continues to get better, as it's bound to do, there will be creative aspects and possibilities that are unheard of today and are beyond our imagination, just as digital cameras were a few years ago. When I took my first pictures, if anyone had asked me about a digital camera, the response would have been, "Huh?" That's true of virtually everyone on this forum. Anyone who thinks today's technology will still be in use 100 years from now is a fool. Today's SOTA cameras will be long ago turned to dust except for the few that survive in museums.

I'm sure that there were some who said of the now-ubiquitous digital cameras that talent was no longer needed since the camera did everything for the photographer except press the shutter button.