What if you replace "photos" with "music", "art", or "literature"? Sure, we will get to a point where a computer can write a symphony that fits all the characteristics of Beethoven, or write a stylistically accurate Shakespearean sonnet. But it won't have the weight of the artist's observations behind it.
1. Train ride with half hour viewing time to observe the Cristo Redentor. No cameras allowed.
2. Train ride to the statue for a photo of you in front of it, but while the camera can see both you and the statue, you can't see it from your position.
3. Green screen photo of you artificially in front of the statue.
I think a lot of people would, if they thought about it, strongly prefer the first option and ascribe little value to the others. But because they do have cameras and there's an expectation that you take a picture as a tourist, they end up viewing their trip through their camera lens or smartphone screen.
I think it would be a compelling sell if the camera app on a smartphone could prompt users with an offer of a professional-quality photo or video (optionally with the user green-screened in) of a concert, sporting event, or landmark. "Studio X has a professional recording of this event from N angles with better equipment than yours. Add this video to your library instead?"
The killer use for this might be to record/sync school concerts, plays, and sports. So many parents with mediocre cameras all trying to capture the event, and no good way right now to share the output.
"I've noticed the many photographers here, [...]. Always the same conventional eyes, noses, mouths, waxy and smooth and cold. It still always remains dead. And the painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can't go." - Van Gogh
We've been asserting souls for quite a while now and we've been wrong every time. What does the weight of the artist's observations mean? How is that different from the result of machine learning, which is nothing if not carefully considered observations.
Note: The most expensive Van Gogh paintings sell for about 2 orders of magnitude more than the most expensive photographs.
(I was actually surprised at how much the most expensive photographs sold for)
I don't expect any reasonable answer to this, but...
There are two sets of photos, both exactly alike, yet one of those sets was created by capturing photons while the other was created by computers. Both were created by pointing a machine at your kid during a trip, and subsequently giving you a digital image. How to you tell those apart?
How do you know it's your kid on your kid's photos anyway?
As an image production apparatus, you can replace photography by machine learning (or really any other image creation process, drawing, painting, raytracing, whatever), and in these cases yes, photography becomes a little less important.
However, a photograph is not only an image, it is a trace of actual photons that existed and imprinted a photographic material. When you look at a photograph, you're not only looking at a picture, you're also looking at the imprint of reality. It's the same emotional effect as looking at your kid's hand print on paper, or wearing your grandmother's ring. There is affect involved that comes from the reality of the experience.
A souvenir picture is not only an image that helps you remember the time when you and your friends were doing something, it's an actual fossil of that moment. And that's what matters in photography. And that's why it's not going away any time soon.