The debate surrounding the use of AI models is certainly present today. We see companies making use of AI models, while comment sections overflow with angry messages such as: “We don’t want to see robots, we want to see REAL models of flesh and blood.”

La Trahison des images (The Treachery of Images) is a well-known painting by René Magritte (1929). The painting depicts a pipe, beneath which are the words: “Ceci n'est pas une pipe.” Magritte himself explained:

“The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe,’ I would have been lying!”
— René Magritte

An image is always an image. Whether we paint, photograph, sketch, or… prompt, it always remains our interpretation of the reality we experience. It is never reality itself.