There has never not been a time when photography was not manipulated in some way, be it as simple as picking a subject and framing it in a specific way can completely change the story.

I really enjoy photography as a hobby, however I find it a bit embarrasing and intrusive to take photos of other people, so my photos tend to look empty of people.

I will allways frame a picture to have no or as a very few people in it as possible.

In general I don't edit my photos on the computer, I just let them speak for themselves, even if that story is a half truth.

We have never been able to trust photographs completely, though you make a good point about truth in numbers, that won't go way just because of AI.

The big issue now is how easiy it is to make a completely believably faked photo out of an existing photo, we have been able to do this for decades, but is has been way, way harder to do.

As for the blockchain making photos valuable, we tried that, NFTs as a concept is dumb and has failed, I don't believe that NFTs will be the future of ownership.