Abstract This paper examines how the AI Image transforms the indexical conditions of image-making and, with them, the ethical relation to Alterity that has long underpinned photographic practice. While conventional photography maintains a legible index—what Barthes called "that-has-been"—such indexicality has been lost in the case of AI images, where a single image is in fact produced from computationally dispersed archives in which any visible sign of origin becomes irretrievable. Crucially, the paper distinguishes between the disappearance of indexical presence and the persistence of the Derridean trace: though one can no longer perceive a clear index of an AI image, the trace of the Other nevertheless persists within the very generative process. The loss of a direct index to the Other thus enables an illusion of absolute ownership, where the image appears authored by the user's desire alone. You own the image, but it doesn’t belong to you. Without the recalcitrant encounter with alterity in the image-making process, AI image generation risks becoming structurally auto-erotic. The paper therefore argues that negotiation with Alterity is foundational to ethical image-making and thus essential to artistic research practice.