This incident highlights the ongoing debate about AI-generated content in creative fields. It follows a trend where AI images have been winning photography contests, such as when the Sony World Photography Awards awarded a prize to an AI image in the Creative category of the 2023 Open competition. Astray's win is seen as a rare victory for photography against AI.
Key takeaways:
- Miles Astray, a photographer, won an AI image contest with a real photograph of a flamingo, aiming to show that nature can still beat machine-generated imagery.
- Astray was later disqualified from the 1839 Color Photography Awards because his entry did not meet the requirements for the AI-generated image category.
- The 1839 color photography contest is judged by professionals from The New York Times, Getty Images, Phaidon Press, Christie’s, and Maddox Gallery, among others.
- AI-generated content has been winning photography contests since text-to-image models advanced a few years ago, sparking a debate about the benefits and pitfalls of this technology in the creative industry.