Digital photography is completely different. The principles do not change whether you’re shooting film or digital. You have to frame the shot. You have to make sure the exposure is what you want. You have to set f-stop. Even if you try to argue that automatic settings on cameras negate all of that, which I don’t agree with but let’s allow it, at the end of the day you have to pick the focal distance and frame, which are the anchor points of the entire photograph. That is not the same as an AI generated facsimile, and whether you’re shooting film or digital does not change that fact.

When use a LLM tool to write, paint, or generate a photograph, you are not actually writing the words, you are not actually physically painting, and you are not framing a photo. It is literally a different process and medium. You can enjoy that, even I have at times, but it’s not the same thing.