The text you quote is a letter written by a single person, it does not speak on behalf of the painters of that era. Any painter working in a style other than Hyperrealism would have no reason to fear that their art would be supplanted by photography.
AI, on the other hand, does have the potential to supplant every form of human artistic/creative expression.
Programming is clearly a creative endeavour that requires talent, which is at risk of being replaced by AI. There are areas of programming that use code as a means of expression to create visual art. Have you heard of the demoscene?
Not quite. Most artists (in France, where photography was invented, in particular) didn’t actually care. The few who voiced concerns were a few thinkers and a few classicist portrait painters of the era.
However, by that time Art had already started to steer away from classicism to modernism and while the driver behind this shift was indeed a contemporary technological achievement, that wasn’t photography. It was the invention of tubing, which allowed painters for the very first time to get out of their studios, take their paints with them and depict the real world, rather than do artificial compositions of objects and human models as had been the norm for the previous, erm… 500 years or so.
With regards to photography, it never replaced painting. Not even portrait painting. And the reason is that, to get your portrait done by an actual painter was always very expensive; and I’m sure you understand why. But why would somebody want his portrait done anyway? The reason is vanity. The need of people (who believe are important) to be immortalized. But because it was expensive, only wealthy people could have their own and their family portraits painted. So, while photography ‘democratized immortality’ (because non-wealthy people could have their photos taken), wealthy people still wanted to have their portraits painted by famous painters because, well, ‘photographs were for the lesser classes’.
So, no, there wasn’t really a fear that photography could replace painting (well, not unless you took that Mr Bean movie more seriously than intended). And there actually isn’t a fear among artists today that AI image generation will replace painting and/or Arts (capital ‘A’ on purpose). It will probably be incorporated into certain practices, much like it happened with photography. It will certainly be incorporated in applications that carry an ‘artistic tag’ (low-case ‘a’), again like with photography.
However, experience has taught me that when it comes to AI it’s better to not let the discussion escape a given frame. Therefor, this discussion shouldn’t be treated as ‘about art’; that is too broad to make sense. It’s about a hobby that we (as in, the people who have the same hobby) have invented from scratch and have made up our minds with regards to the ethics and culture around it. This hobby will not evolve (because it is artificially locked) and will probably die with us; unlike art which will go through numerous radical-isms for as long as humanity exists.
So, keep it in context and be happy & relevant. 
Is it necessary to be that aggressive? I read some comments in this thread that really put me off this community.
This isn’t a ban, not even close. What the admin is asking the community is: do we want to make things easier for people to know if a game was produced with AI or not?
You can one-shot a game with Claude Code, with more or less quality, and that has potential to generate a lot of noise in the forum. Only for that, IMHO it would be useful to have a separate category.
But I don’t think there’s anything to justify tbh. The admin asked a question with a vote, and we voted.
I don’t know why that is so offensive that people have an opinion that differs from yours.
But that’s why they are basically the same. AI coding might very well get us to a point that literally anyone can make a quick game or conversion, in the same way you can point your phone camera and something and snap a picture.
But quality costs, whether it’s time, effort or money. And if you want quality ports and games, then ultimately it’s going to require someone with skill. Now that person may do it entirely by hand (portrait painting) or with controlled use of AI tools (like a pro photographer).
I don’t have an issue with labelling content as using AI, but sooner or later that’s just going to be a very meaningless tag to apply.
I guess you do not actually mean “meaningless” but probably something like “it will not have the meaning we imagine now”.
Meaningless in the sense it will end up applied to so many things that you won’t be able to use it in any practical sense. Like tagging things as “software”
Well, the following part in my post reads a bit weird; probably got messed up while editing; also being not a native speaker played its part. Sorry about that, this is what you get for not using AI I guess. 
So that:
…should read something like:
“With regards to photography, it didn’t replace painting back then. Not even portrait painting, despite the fact that to get your portrait done by an actual painter was always very expensive But why would somebody want his portrait done in the first place?”
I do believe people got the point anyway. I just wanted to clarify.
I disagree : an untalented person can’t produce anything quality, even with AI
Can you keep the thought until the next wave of, say for example, converted pictures to the CPC?
For starters, if for whatever reason one hesitates to call bullshit for what it is, then sure. There’s not even going to be a battle to be won.
…so?
Perhaps today it takes talent to write the right prompts to create something good with AI, but that would be a very short-sighted approach, since in a year or even a few months, that “talent” might no longer be needed to do anything with AI.
I don’t think it’s a matter of prompts. It has to do more with ideas creation and planning. Yes it’s possible that the AI will also do this for us but it’s a long way from now and, frankly, at that point being human won’t be worth living anymore
In any work one should be able to recognize the added value, the human touch, even if the brush is the AI, the mind behind it stays human
Is “it’s possible that the AI will also do this for us” like a couple of years from now?
On the day when all you have to do is ask for anything in the simplest way possible for AI to deliver it to you in the highest quality, what incentive will there be to create something for others to enjoy?
Of course, it might still make sense if the majority has become so lazy that even asking an AI for something with a simple phrase feels like a huge effort to them, and they just want to keep scrolling.
This is all getting a bit hysterical.
Just have two tags, one for vibe-coding, and one for generative-art, that authors can apply to projects as needed.
Both these terms are well-defined by now.
And let other people themselves decide what to consume.
Anything else is unneeded.
I have deliberately left out AI-assistance in coding because frankly, that’s no big deal. No more than using a spreadsheet to add numbers up.
Warning, I’m going to get opioniated about this, as this has been bubbling up a bit, and I need to get this off my chest.
For example, I have ChatGPT write a python script to generate a binary file containing an array of strings, along with an array of offset pointers to each strong. This means I can support multiple languages in my projects by simply loading in the appropriate generated file into memory at a fixed address. Our lovely @Gryzor has promised me a Greek translation of one of my upcoming projects (Hero), and this way all I have to do to support full translation is to produce a list of English strings for him to translate. It doesn’t matter about different lengths in different languages as the script also produces the pointer table. Wham bam thank you mam, multi-language support for any language that uses or can use the standard ASCII characters (below Asc 128).
I’ll be f*cked if I try to do that by hand as A) it’s python and the whole space-based indentation nonsense irritates me, and B) looking at the produced code, it’s all very straightforward and understandable but it would have taken me much much longer to generate by “hand”, and hobbies are meant to be fun, and who seriously has time to piss about writing tooling and script nonsense? I also use ChatGPT to help me profile and optimise my C code, as that sort of thing it’s very very good at.
And if people don’t like this, we’ll, tough. How much of my free time are said people think they’re entitled to? All my code is released open-source, so if someone wants to “De-AI” my projects by replacing said scripts with artisan hand crafted code carved with needles onto magnetic disc platters or whatever, go for it. Whatever. The code is all out there.
But I’m sure as hell, as a creator of CPC games (I’ve written 3 so far, all well received thankfully, and all initially written and coded “by hand”), not going to jump through ideological purity hoops just to satisfy whiners on the Internet.
Specifically those who don’t code themselves. I’ve spent 30 years professionally programming, I want to enioy life now, not piss about hand crafting artesanal “code”. I am now able to do what I couldn’t do back when I were a wee lad with a 464 and couldn’t get beyond Basic.
Anyway, deep breaths.
As an aside, I’m swapping upcoming project (Hero) from scrolling to flick screen, as even with AI assistance, I cannot get completely-smooth CRTC-poking-based full screen scrolling working to my satisfaction, and my knowledge of CRTC gubbins is not quite enough for me (even with AI assistance) to feel comfortable with poking about with things, so I’m going back to what is now my comfort zone and make it flick-screen instead, and get the damn thing out, or at least something playable.
And all this, whatever it is, it sure as hell isn’t vibe coding. And you whine at me about my use of AI, you’ll be getting a metaphorical slap.
Anyway, ahem. Phew. Done.
Nothing more than pointing to an existing scenario where people have tried things and it’s questionable whether it really made much difference other than busy work and untidiness.