The Sony World Photography Awards is the world’s leading photography competition. It is held every year and attracts many photographers and artists working in the photography industry. What is interesting about this year’s 2023 is that one of the artist’s submissions is not a real photo, but an AI Drawing, but I didn’t expect to win the championship of this category in the end! The artist also decided to tell everyone, let everyone know that this picture was drawn by AI, and refused to accept the award.
Foreign artist won the Sony World Photography Award with AI drawing, but he refused to accept the award
The awards of the Sony World Photography Awards include US$5,000, Sony camera equipment, travel to London to receive the award, or promotion around the world through books and exhibitions. The awards are very rich, and many artists participate every year. According to foreign PetaPixel According to reports, Boris Eldagsen, a photographic media artist living in Berlin, participated in this year’s event and submitted a photo called THE ELECTRICIAN, which is a portrait of two women. Before he opened up about the AI drawing, he said It really doesn’t look like a flaw, AI drawings often have abnormal fingers, this one doesn’t appear, it looks like a photo taken with old technology or a long time ago photography method:
This photo was not only selected for the “Creative – 2023 Open Competition”, but also became the champion of this category:
After Boris Eldagsen heard the news, he shared his thoughts and views on AI in the blog:
I’m so happy that I won the Creative Category/Open/Single Image at the Sony World Photography Awards 2023! I started photography in 1989 and became a photo media artist after 2000. After more than two decades in photography, my artistic focus has now shifted to exploring the creative possibilities generated by AI.
Boris Eldagsen recently added a note to his website stating that he will not be accepting incentives and prizes for Sony camera equipment and that the whole thing is an experiment and an effort to bring more attention to the subject. And mentioned: “Thanks for choosing my photo and making this a historic moment, because this is the first AI-painted photo to win a prestigious international photo competition, how many of you think or doubt that it was generated with AI What? There’s something weird about it, right?”
He explained that using AI graphics to participate in the Sony World Photography Awards is to know whether such competitions are ready for the era of AI graphics, and the results prove that they are not. AI graphics and photography should not compete with each other in this competition because they are different. AI drawing is not photography, so no prizes will be accepted.
This photo is part of Boris Eldagsen’s continuous research on PSEUDOMNESIA: Fake Memories series since 2022. PSEUDOMNESIA is from Latin, which probably refers to false memories, such as: memories of events that never happened.
Boris Eldagsen said that the pictures in this series use the visual background of the 1940s. All the content is imagined through language and generated using AI graphics. Constantly modified and combined with inpainting’, ‘outpainting’ and ‘prompt whispering’ techniques.
There was also a hiccup during the award presentation, where Boris Eldagsen, in a category that didn’t require a live award, broke onto the main stage himself and made a statement. Then he stayed until the end, and no one from SWPA or CREO contacted him, and no one was interested in talking to him:
It can be seen that as AI graphics become more and more powerful, in future photography competitions, there will definitely be pictures that are not real photos, but pictures generated by AI. This will test the recognition ability of photography competition judges. To fairness is definitely a big problem.
Source: PetaPixel
