I do not start by asking whether a tool belongs in art. I start with the image I am trying to make.

Photography is often raw material. The camera captures enough of a place, object, person, or moment for me to rebuild the version that stayed in my mind. Sometimes that takes color work and cropping. Sometimes the source nearly disappears under compositing, painting, abstraction, or generated material.

Direction comes before output

AI can generate possibilities quickly. Possibility is not authorship. The artistic work is deciding what the image needs, directing the experiment, noticing what is wrong, rejecting most of what appears, changing what remains, and stopping at the right moment.

A process record is allowed to be incomplete

Historical work does not always arrive with a clean archive. I would rather label a missing date or source file honestly than decorate the record with a story I cannot support. New work can begin with better documentation. Older work can gain detail as the archive is reconciled.

The practical sequence

Start with an image, question, memory, photograph, sketch, or generated source.
Test composition, color, scale, rhythm, and the parts that still feel false.
Select, reject, revise, combine, and rebuild.
Prepare the finished file and record what can be supported.
Keep the useful failures when they explain the finished decision.

The work is not important because technology touched it. The technology matters only when it helps the work become what I intended.