Great piece, Alberto! The comparison with photography is spot on, myself being an amateur photographer with many years of learning the craft.

In photography, to avoid the use of the tricky "art" term, I make the distinction between "testimonial" photography and "expressive" one. The former tries to capture reality, just like early photography, but also like selfies (their intrinsic value is attached to the identity of the people in the pic –if you change the face of the subjects in a selfie, it becomes pointless.

Expressive photography doesn't depend on the identity of the people or places captured in the photo, but on the emotions it evokes inside the viewer. The identity of the subjects has nothing to do with its value.

As you point out, something similar will happen with AI image generation.