But what is a "real thing"? I would argue that photography is a medium for understanding a deeper underlying reality - just like our own brains and sense-percep

But what is a "real thing"? I would argue that photography is a medium for understanding a deeper underlying reality - just like our own brains and sense-perceptions are, but with different mechanics. The angle with which you take a photo, or the optics which the camera uses, or the post-processing that camera software applies are just as much a mechanism for interpreting the "thing itself" as the vagaries of our own sense-perceptions when we "see" something. In addition, these multiple representations (our senses and the images we create) interact - for example, we sometimes think a photo is "bad" because it doesn't match the representation in our brain, and sometimes we find that "hyperreal" photos (to use Baudrillard's term) override our perceptions. So I think it's silly to worry that Generative AI might make photos less representative of "objective" reality. Perhaps it's even a good thing if more folks accept the inherent subjectivity of any media.