RE: Can "AI" really improve a quality photographic image?

I'm too much of a "romantic" for taking things too far from the truth in photography. Roland Barthes "Camera Lucida" is about 80% of my belief in photography as a powerful, moving medium. Come to think of it, its been something like six months since I last read it, maybe it needs another cycle through my brain...

Sure, there's the one click (and VERY expensive tools) that get you pro-level, frequency separated, dodged, burned, textured, skin, but... that's not the objective reality we find our selves in.

I am in a bit of a difficult position emotionally about the AI Art / LLM side of things.

I hate LLMs right now because people don't understand how they work and use them to replace thought. I like text to image, because however the image is generated, it makes me force myself to think and look for elements that I wouldn't envision in that image if I was to draw it from my own imagination, a sort of regressive analysis on "I wanted this, but this element is there for a reason, why?"

I don't know. I have had the classical art training. I know how to "Speak" art. So many people who are "prompt engineers" or "prompt seers" are just hitting the right, ticklish spots of that black box to get "nice" images.

But when people with proper art training start using it, and start photobashing, and start making, I think that's when there's the possibility for magic. The possibility, because not everything every artist produces is a hit every single time.