Will people lose to artificial intelligence (AI) in art competitions? On April 13, the Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) 2023 were presented in London. A portrait by Boris Eldagsen, a professional photographer from Berlin, Germany, won the creative category. However, Eldasen publicly stated at the award ceremony that his work was created by AI and refused to accept the award.
The AI work won the Photography Award, reminiscent of the photorealistic representation of portraits taken away from the painter by the camera of the 19th century. So what will AI bring to human art right now? Can images made by machines be considered art?
Boris Eldasen creates "Electrician" with AI image generator DALL-E2 (2022)
To the surprise of the Sony World Photography Awards organizers, Eldassen did not originally schedule Eldassen to speak, but he took the stage on his own and posted the content of his speech on his social networking sites. Eldasen said, "Thank you so much for choosing my work to create this historic moment. This is the first ever AI-generated image to win a prize in an internationally renowned photography competition. How many people know or suspect that this is an AI-generated image? It looks a little weird, right? ”
At the ceremony, Eldasen refused to accept the award
German photographer refused to win an award for an AI "photo"
According to reports, the work, titled The Electrical (2022), is a black-and-white image that includes portraits of two women, one older and the other relatively young, inspired by photographs by Roger Ballen. Created by AI image generator DALL-E2 last August, the skin on the faces of the two is somewhat unnatural and lacks detail.
Works by Roger Byron
Eldasen submitted Electrician to three photo competitions, including the Sony World Photography Awards, to test whether a panel of judges could identify artificial intelligence. "It's not about winning or proving anything." "Before switching to AI, I spent 30 years in photography, giving photography lectures and participating in proposals for drafting AI-related legislation in Germany. ”
But surprisingly, all three photo contests "Electrician" made it to the finals, but Eldasen applied several times in the past with "real" photos, but none of them were shortlisted.
In Eldasen's view, photography competitions should change the rules as artificial intelligence continues to evolve. But it turns out that the Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) guidelines for submitting works do not contain provisions dealing with the art of artificial intelligence, nor do they require applicants or even finalists to submit documents in RAW format (digital negatives). Eldagson said he received an email from SWPA in January asking for more information about his selected work, and he provided social media accounts in which he shared many of the AI images he created.
According to Eldasen, in February, the contest organizers emailed him to inform him that he had won the creative award. "I told them it was done by AI and proposed to create a new category for AI-generated works to address the current trend of AI art." According to Eldasen, the SWPA responded that it was okay and went on to give him the award, even though he insisted that it should be given to someone else.
Noemi Comi (Italy), Lupus Hominariu (The Legend of the Werewolf Image in Calabria, Italy), 2nd place in the Creative category at the Sony World Photography Awards 2023
In response to Eldasen's claim, a spokesman for the SWPA organizers said: "We corresponded with Boris before announcing Boris as the Grand Prix in the Open Creative category. Boris confirmed that the image was 'co-created' using artificial intelligence. He has now decided to refuse to accept the award. We respect his decision to remove his work from the competition. ”
It is reported that before the announcement of the winners of the "2023 SWPA" on March 14, the organizers contacted Eldasen by email to ask about his winning works. The photographer suggested using this work as a starting point for a dialogue about AI media, but the organizers felt that there was no platform for direct dialogue.
Eldarsen eventually publicly rejected the award at the ceremony. Soon, the SWPA website removed Eldasen's name from the list of winners, and his "photo" was quietly removed from the "Sony World Photography Awards 2023" exhibition at Somerset Palace in London without explanation.
"I never intended to be so rude and rude from the beginning, but I sincerely believe that we need to talk about AI creation and wonder how this will affect photography." Eldasen said.
Edgar Martins (Portugal), Our War, Photographer of the Year and 1st Prize in the Professional Competition at the Sony World Photography Awards 2023, Portrait Photography
Will "AI art" retake the path of "photography"?
In the past year, the development of artificial intelligence has been amazing, and the images generated by artificial intelligence have become more and more realistic, will it eventually lead to the proliferation of "fake photos"? Could the Sony World Photography Awards be the beginning of an open discussion about the complex relationship between photography and artificial intelligence?
In Eldasen's view, the "photo-like" visual language of AI-generated images has been separated from the "photographic" medium and is now free and messy. It is crucial to make a clear distinction between "photo-like" and "photography", as they describe very different visual forms that can more accurately define the criteria for future photo contests, festivals, exhibitions, etc.
Historically, photography was thought to have replaced painting. As early as 170 years ago, Baudelaire declared that the nascent medium of photography was "the mortal enemy of painting, a refuge for all failed painters, the untalented, and the lazy." Today, the debate extends from photography to painting to the impact of new media on visual culture. If the 19th-century camera took away the realistic representation of the portrait from the painter, it provided the prerequisites for the birth of modern art. So what will AI bring to human art right now? Can images made by machines be considered art? Where does human creativity fit in this process?
Art is considered the last support for human creativity, but AI technology has now advanced to the point where users can type a sentence to generate "new" images, which are aggregated from images collected on the Internet. The astonishing quality of AI-generated images raises deeper questions about the nature of human creativity, and a large number of AI-generated images will also conflict with paintings, commercial designs, etc., and will raise a series of creative economy issues such as copyright.
For example, Stability AI (open source artificial intelligence company) is one of the targets of many artists' lawsuits today, and the company's Stable Diffusion is an AI technology model that generates pictures based on text, and a large number of artists' creations have become a database of AI learning. The lawsuit against Stable Diffusion describes it as "exploiting a collection of data collected from the internet." Some insiders believe that AI-generated creations are not original works, but a kind of "synthesis", and suggest that they be regarded as a "collage of the 21st century". But this reference to "collage" is considered a necessary euphemism for AI-generated artwork to be equivalent to that of human artists, and many contemporary critics are considering whether to consider AI art as part of a broader history of painting.
Predictably, this debate will not be quickly and directly, but the process of the debate will help us understand and create the cultural conditions on which emerging technologies are based.
For now, art is much more than digitally captured content on the internet, and the proliferation of AI-generated images in the online environment won't wipe out real-world art, but it does contribute to the development of the creative economy and the reshuffling of markets.
At the same time, it should also be clear that AI currently generates only creative "products", not "art" as commodities. The debates sparked by AI-generated artworks represent the "moment" of the present, as do past art movements.
Note: This article was compiled from Hyperallergic and NOEMA