AI Illustrations as a Camera

[MEPER]

Can you call it a photograph if no camera has been involved at any time?
Then you could start in a drawing or paint program with a white sheet and define each pixel by hand (it will take some time).
There is a finite number of "photographs" possible.
I have attached one of them just to push it to the extremes.
Is this a photograph and if it is not why are the AI-generated photographs?
Is it just if you accept it as a photograph when you look at it?

My personal opinion in the moment is that a camera has to be involved but it can be difficult to prove if it is the case. I may change my opinion at some time.
Using a camera some very abstract photographs can be made. It is just light that has been captured in some way.

[Birna Rørslett]

If the implication of 'using a camera' means an optical system records an image, it is entirely feasible to make a photograph without a camera. Or even AI

This is an image obtained by using neither camera nor lens ....

[MEPER]

If it is not a camera then it is not capture of light?

Mathematical formulars, algorithms etc. can generate digital images.
Random numbers.....fractals....etc.     

[MEPER]

A link to fractals images:

https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=fractals&asset_id=191237819

[Birna Rørslett]

If it is not a camera then it is not capture of light?

Mathematical formulars, algorithms etc. can generate digital images.
Random numbers.....fractals....etc.   

The image is definitively a record of a light field, and in facts depicts a natural fractal phenomenon. It is NOT generated by any mathematical equation.

Neither a traditional camera nor a lens was used.

[MEPER]

Ok, if it is a record of light then you can probably also define the "camera" at an abstract level?
Display of recorded light is a photograph?

[Birna Rørslett]

'Photograph' as it is made by light striking a recording surface ....

[Ann]

AI will be much used for Illustration; especially illustrations for Advertising which attempt to pretend to be real photographs.

At the moment the tell-tale signs of the use of AI-generated images are seen in images of hands, feet, skin-texture, eyes and are clearly obvious in the unmatched lighting in different parts of the composite. This will improve with time.

My personal view is that I only want to use photographs which I have shot myself so I have never bought Stock photographs.

I may use AI techniques and editing to combine a better sky or background with a foreground object but all of the components of the final images will have been generated by my own cameras.