Generative artificial intelligence differs fundamentally from conventional photographic manipulation. Photoshop alters an existing image. A generative model can create an image of an event that never occurred, involving people who were never present in a location that may itself never have existed. The distinction matters because fabrication is becoming detached from physical reality altogether. There need no longer be an original photograph from which the deception was constructed.
Source: Artificial Intelligence and the End of Photographic Evidence