German artist refuses award after his AI image wins prestigious photography prize:
There's some controversy in the photography world as an AI-generated image won a major prize at a prestigious competition, PetaPixel has reported. An piece called The Electrician by Boris Eldagsen took first prize in the Creative category at the World Photography Organization's Sony World Photography Awards — despite not being taken by a camera. Eldagsen subsequently refused the award, saying "AI is not photography. I applied [...] to find out if the competitions are prepared for AI images to enter. They are not."
Eldagsen's image is part of a series called PSEUDOMNESIA: Fake Memories, designed to evoke a photographic style of the 1940s. However, they are in reality "fake memories of a past, that never existed, that no one photographed. These images were imagined by language and re-edited more between 20 to 40 times through AI image generators, combining 'inpainting', 'outpainting', and 'prompt whispering' techniques."
In a blog, Eldagsen explained that he used his experience as a photographer to create the prize-winning image, acting as a director of the process with the AI generators as "co-creators." Although the work is inspired by photography, he said that the point of the submission is that it is not photography. "Participating in open calls, I want to speed up the process of the Award organizers to become aware of this difference and create separate competitions for AI-generated images," he said.
Eldagsen subsequently declined the prize. "Thank you for selecting my image and making this a historic moment, as it is the first AI-generated image to win in a prestigious international photography competition," he wrote. "How many of you knew or suspected that it was AI generated? Something about this doesn't feel right, does it? AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. AI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award.
When does the processing of a 'photograph' become unacceptable? Techniques such as burning and dodging, plus various types of film processing, can all change the image that is finally produced. Digital photographs can be even more easily modified. At what point does it become an entirely new genre. Does the method of production really matter? [JR]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @10:44AM
It's not photography if it stops resembling the original scene you used a camera to take a photo of.
It belongs in a different category e.g. Digital Art etc.
So I agree with the artist. His AI generated image doesn't count as photography and so should not qualify for a photography prize.
If they're giving out photography prizes for digital art, they're doing it wrong.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by barista on Tuesday April 18, @02:05PM
IMHO if an image doesn't involve a camera capturing light, then it isn't a photograph. Digital photos can be created using digital cameras or scanning in analog photos. Even if they're retouched, a camera was involved in their original creation, so they're still considered photographs.
If an image is generated by software or by a human using software, then it's a digital illustration, even if it looks like a photo.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Spamalope on Tuesday April 18, @02:19PM (1 child)
There are already retouching or not distinctions for competitions.
Collages are their own recognized thing too. (multi-image sources)
This line is going to get blurrier.
Photoshop AI driven inpainting to remove a photobomber? That's been here for years.
But what about this:
I'm a photographer.
I've photographed an event where I brought my fancy & rare weird lighting gear to make cool starburst and other fun things in the nightclub fog in addition to the venue lighting. The effects I set up are a dominant feature of the images.
But... something cool happened and happened to be in the wrong place to catch it from the ideal angle. (live shows... getting 'this' shot means missing 'that' one)
If I train the AI based on the photos I took, then ask it to generate the 'missed' one from the correct angle - what's that, exactly? (besides distinct from 'not at all Open AI' stealing images so their AI can 'own' them and copy artist style supplanting them)
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 18, @07:36PM
It's photorealistic art. If you're a talented painter, and paint an actual view so well that it can't be distinguished from a photograph, you're still making a painted image, not a photograph. Even though the image you've painted was indeed first projected on your retina.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday April 18, @04:23PM (3 children)
The man doesn't accept the prize or the money, but he'll make 10x that over time with his newfound media exposure and anti-AI celebrity status.
What I'm saying is, don't think for one second he did this over principles or convictions: he's just playing his cards right to advance his career. And in this day and age, appearing as a prominent anti-AI dissenter is kind of the only future for a human artist.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Tuesday April 18, @05:33PM (1 child)
So the artist *was* describing something that happened in the past! Just in a meta, much worse kind of way. And you *can* be an AI-dissenter, especially if it becomes harder to tell what the past or present actually is; you can be for or against anything, no biggie, since what you're for or against can be made up by something far more convincing and competent than the US's current "fake news" legislature.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday April 19, @01:12AM
Which has always been the gold standard for this sort of thing, Citizen.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 18, @07:42PM
According to the summary, he's not anti-AI. He just says the AI images should be in a different category from actual photographs.
Similar to how thinking that a cyclist should not compete in a marathon doesn't mean you're against cycling.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @05:16PM
I mean it's up to specific competitions to decide what is allowed and what is not, but the word photography means "drawing with light" and burning and dodging are both firmly in the category of using light to create drawings.
While the "digital dark room" may no longer involve literal drawing with light, the tools used for normal digital photo processing are generally doing the same kinds of things you can do in a real dark room, just faster and less expensive, so we can still reasonably call that "digital photography".