If AI is Killing Photography, Does That Mean Photography Killed Painting?

With artificial intelligence (AI) text-to-image generators exploding in popularity right now, it sometimes feels like photography is facing its most serious threat yet. In the last few months, DALL-E has been used to create shockingly realistic portraits of people who do not exist. Meanwhile, a Midjourney user even won a fine art competition using a picture he created with the software. With AI systems like DALL-E and Midjourney effortlessly churning out photo-realistic images, it may seem like there is no hope left for photography. With the havoc AI-generated art could wreck on the field of photography, for some people, this may bring to mind the way the invention of photography devastated painters in the nineteenth century.