What sort of editing did you have in mind? If you are using SD to add things to the photo for example, you would see the difference between the raw file and the .jpg you submitted?
- Changing the style of the whole photo to (for instance) make it look old and analog.
- "Enhancing" it with HDR, depth of field, focus everywhere or something like that.
- Altering exposure beyond what you could get out of a underexposed/overexposed RAW file.
- Stylizing the human subjects to make them look more attractive, more grimey or whatever
All these things could arguably be done in photoshop, but its just very labor intensive and more hit-or-miss. Hence the contest rules would have to exclude most photoshop work if they want to exclude diffusion.
It’s already the case to add textures and patterns. Like sharpening images of the moon and its craters with AI. It’s hard to draw the line. Some phone does these AI work live now!