A key difference is that each of the mediums you mentioned are deterministic and unbiased (to a certain degree.) The the work created can therefore be inferred to be a "pure" expression of the artists intent. A pro photographer and my mom will get wildly different results even with the same equipment. Not so with AI, which very much has it's own bias and is eager to inject it.

The other question is, is AI a tool or a medium? I often hear people say "Well EDM was looked down on when it first came out," but EDM is not a tool, it's a genre. I think most artists wouldn't really care about "AI" becoming a genre of art, but it's silly to think that all future art will be AI just as it would have been silly to think EDM would have replaced all future music.

> A pro photographer and my mom will get wildly different results even with the same equipment. Not so with AI, which very much has it's own bias and is eager to inject it.

That particular AI models have their own bias and are eager to inject it is among the reasons why a skilled user and an unskilled user will have very different results, not a reason why that isn’t true.

> The other question is, is AI a tool or a medium?

Is oil paint on canvas a set of tools or a medium? In art, a tool ot set of tools often characterizes, or even defines, a medium; they are different but not orthogonal concerns. (And the cultural phenomenon of identification of a regularly-used tool or combination of tools as defining a medium generally only happens well after that tool or combination has been in significant use for a while.)

AI is a broad category of tools. Particular combinations of those (either with eachother or with other tools) may also come to be be understood as particular media.

All due respect to your mother, but a pro photographer would certainly achieve better results. Your mom may recognize something is not right but be unable to articulate it clearly to the tool. Same problem that's always been. The bar has been lowered, not removed.