Even in traditional film photography, you can easily get "untrue" pictures. Film is sensitive to UV and near infrared, so filters can create very unreal imagery. And multiple exposure can do all sorts of tricks. The averaging of many faces together, creating a sort of uncanny valley result, was first done in the analog, stacking aligned photos with multiple exposure.
This is generally still considered photography. Art photography, if it's any good.
One could say the key element is the artist combining actual scenes that were exposed to film or a sensor. Perhaps massaged a bit in the dark room or digitally. But the core material is exposed images from actual scenes. It's photography while that element remains dominant. But then again ... isn't that sort of what these generative AIs also do? It's all originally derived from actual photographs.