I've adopted a practice of having odd backgrounds for video conferences.¹ I generally find these through Google image search, but I often have a hard time finding exactly what I would like. My own use case is a bit idiosyncratic and frivolous, but I can see this being really handy for art direction needs. When I used to publish a magazine, I would often have to commission photographs for the needs of the publication. A custom photograph (in the 90s) would cost from $200–$1000² depending on the needs (and none required models). Stock photo pictures for commercial use were often comparable in cost. Being able to generate what I wanted with a tool like this would have been fantastic. I think that this can replace a lot of commercial illustration.

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1. My current work background is an enormous screen-filling eyeball. For my writing group, I try to have something that reflects the story I'm workshopping if I'm workshopping that week and something surreal otherwise.

2. My most expensive custom illustration was a title for an article about stone carver/letterer David Kindersley which I had inscribed in stone and photographed.

Or as a precursor to Meta Horizon build a 3D world with speech

https://www.fastcompany.com/90725035/metaverse-horizon-world...

Certainly food for thought.

Say I'm looking for photography of real events and places, like a royal weeding or a volcano erupting does this help me? Of specific places and architectural features? Of a protest?

You're suggesting clipart on steroids: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com

I think if I was istockphoto.com I'd be a little worried, but that is microstock photography. I'm not sure that is worth billions. In fact I know it isn't.

Besides once this tech is wildly available if anything it devalues this sort of thing further closer to $0.

It would probably augment existing processes rather than replace them completely.

If you are doing a photoshoot for a banana stand with a human model with characteristics x,y,z you're still going to get a human from an agency or craigslist to pose. If suddenly the client informs you that they needed human a,b,c instead maybe one of these forthcoming tools will let you swap that out faster. You'd upload your photoshoot and an example or two of the type of human model you wished you had retroactively and it would fix it up faster than an intern.

Cool.