If a user cannot upload an image to an article, they should not see the image upload icon.
It teaches users to ignore the action icon tray if there are often icons they cannot interact with.
If the article does need an image, icon should appear as the 4th icon.
This will be a better call to action because a user will see a new action available.
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
I'd suggest creating a story around this. This is not a bug as this was the original design.
We talked about this with Vibha and at the time decided it was more important to have consistent locations for icons e.g. always clicking the 1st icon takes you to editor. Also there is a big technical problem here with not showing it as it would lead to icons jumping around/disappearing depending on whether JavaScript is enabled and/or a picture is enabled (all tests for photo uploads happen on the client side, so I suspect would need to be accompanied by some sort of appearing/disappearing animation) .
We also toyed with the idea of making it possible to upload pictures associated with a page which don't actually get placed on the page but that never went anywhere.