> So these are more artistic photo works than real science photos...

I disagree. If there are many flies around a statue, and I photograph the statue but remove the flies in the photo (via AI or any other technique), then I'm still producing an image of something that exists in the world - exactly as it appears in the world.

I agree that the claim "no generative AI used" is technically incorrect, but I do feel that the image does not contain any AI-hallucinated content and therefore is an accurate representation of reality. These structures appear in the image exactly as they exist in nature.