For many photographers, artificial intelligence is their worst enemy. The evolving power of computers to create images that quickly, credibly and cheaply simulate the work that humans have done with cameras for more than a century threatens their very existence.

It’s not a conspiracy theory to say AI could replace many real photographers, especially those in the commercial realm, in a matter of years. It has already started.

At the same time, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center has been their best friend. The Denver-based non-profit has spent 62 years doing everything in its power to elevate the images that photographers make, staging countless exhibitions, public events and educational programs to enhance public understanding and appreciation of what the organization’s very existence argues is an essential art form.

That makes CPAC’s current exhibition a curious, and certainly controversial, outing. “History Reimagined” features three photographers whose work is generated exclusively by artificial intelligence. No use of actual mechanical cameras, no photo shoots in perfectly lit studios or on busy urban streets or in war zones, no sitting of subjects or framing of scenes.

Clearly, curator Samantha Johnston, who also happens to be CPAC’s executive director, is playing the traitor here by engaging with artists whose main tools are prompts, entered into programs, which generate images based on billions of data sets stored digitally around the globe.

These artists don’t point and shoot; they sit and type. They are anti-photographers, at least in the making of the work now on display at CPAC. They don’t belong here.

But this risky move has a significant reward. It is one of the most thoughtful and timely exhibits that CPAC has ever done. Print by print, it is a wildly captivating showcase of groundbreaking art.

Johnston knew she would take some heat, and made some wise advance moves to head off criticism and open up minds. In her curator’s statement, she notes how the show respects CPAC’s foundational mission to “acknowledge and respond to the technological innovations that are transforming the medium.”

She has a point there. CPAC guided the photo-loving public through the transition from analog to digital photography, the last revolution that altered how we see and respond to image-making. It is the institution’s responsibility to explore what comes next.

She also built her roster around three people who have demonstrated real skills with actual cameras. Todd Dobbs, Laura Rautjoki and Phillip Toledano are all accomplished in traditional photography techniques. That gives them at least some cred with the photo crowd.

Most importantly, she found good products to show off as examples of AI’s abilities.

The images in this show do not just mimic actual photos; they do so with finesse and a deep understanding of what makes a quality photo connect to the human spirit as well.

That is to say, they do not look fake. Nor do they look hyper-real. Viewers cannot easily brush them off as follies and are forced to confront them as qualified competitors to traditional photos. The enemy is well-armed, and it’s got skills.

Within that, these artists deploy a lot of imagination and exploration. They each have their own motivation for making fakes, and each challenges the usual boundaries placed around art-making. This work engages a fundamental question: Is creating visual images through AI an extension of photography, or is it a whole new art form?

In some ways, these images feel very much like the contemporary art we see now in galleries and museums, with artists exploring topics of politics, media, racial bias and exploration of personal identity. They are trendy that way.

For example, the pieces from Rautjoki’s “The Image of a Woman” series look at the way females have been presented in art and media in her home country of Finland — mostly by male artists, filmmakers and photographers — and how that impacts her own ideas of self.

Her tactic is to replace the male gaze with data-driven images prompted by a female artist and produced by AI. Because the data set that AI uses includes historical photos, journalistic products and things like selfies, Rautjoki’s images alter the usual gender biases.

Within that new reality, she ventures far into the surreal, generating work of full-blown, often eerie, fantasy. Some of these objects explore the past and some feel super present, and many are quite funny. But she manages to make things that demonstrate, as she says in her statement, “the same quiet, ordinary, and unpretentious atmosphere that has characterized my previous work as a photographic artist.”

Fiction drives the work of Toledano, whose “Another America” series rewrites the history of mid-20th century New York City. His question: If it is becoming impossible to know if a photo is telling the truth, why not create a truth of your own — and make it more interesting than what really happened?

So he prompts AI to visualize his fantasies. One photo shows a giant sinkhole taking out a large section of street in Manhattan, which would have been a calamitous event — if it had actually happened. Another shows wolves roaming the streets of the city, while another depicts a massive urban flood. Some of the photos are accompanied by not-true stories penned by writer John Kenney.

Toledano’s photos demonstrate the power of AI to create fantastical pictures and its capacity to make them feel ultra-real — but also its dangers in allowing users to manipulate memory with deftness.

Dobbs’ work has the most critical take on AI’s abilities. To create his images, he prompted his computer to produce a “photograph of a typical American,” and it gladly offered up scores of scenes of human figures decked out in red, white and blue, often to ridiculous extremes.

The photos document one of AI’s biggest problems: “Despite running the same prompt countless times, the resulting images are uniformly American, white, and suburban — a visual echo of dominant cultural norms,” as the curator’s segment sums it up. Dobbs’ point is that AI is only as good as the data it knows, and oftentimes that data is lacking.

But Dobbs’ work does not come off as such a simple question-and-answer. It contains a deeper discussion about patriotism, consumerism and the nuances of personal and national identity. It condemns AI but at the same time honors it by understanding its power to both reflect and drive the cultural conversation.

That same idea overrides the exhibition as a whole. AI is here, and it is something to fear. It may be the source of our extermination, but can it make us more thoughtful and creative humans as we head out the door?

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer who specializes in fine arts.