German artist rejects prestigious award
The debate about artificial intelligence has now even penetrated the art world. German artist Boris Eldagsen has submitted – and won – an AI-generated image to the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards.
But Eldagsen doesn’t want the price at all. Instead, he wanted to set an example by submitting the AI image.
“The Eletrician” is the name of the picture with which Eldagsen won one of the prizes in the international photo competition. It’s part of a series called Pseudomnesia: Fake Memories, meant to evoke the style of photography of the 1940s.
The name says it all, like Eldagsen the series explained on his website, because the pictures are “false memories from the past that never existed, that nobody photographed”. They were reworked 20 to 40 times by AI image generators using various techniques such as “inpainting”, “outpainting” or “prompt whispering”.
Like the organizers of the photo competition of the BBC said Eldagsen misled them about the AI portion of his project. However, this may have been the intention.
In a statement on his website Eldagsen came out as a “cheeky rascal” who took part for a reason. “I wanted to find out if competitions of this type are ready for AI images. They are not,” writes Eldagsen.
“Thank you for choosing my picture and turning this into a historical moment,” Eldagsen writes in the post. Because for the first time an AI-generated image was awarded in an international photography competition.
However, this should not be the case, as he continues to write, because “they are different structures. They aren’t photographs. That’s why I won’t accept the award.” With this rejection, he hopes to “speed up” the debate about AI in the photography world and looks forward to participating in this debate.
Eldagsen is already part of the debate. In a lecture A few weeks ago he spoke of his efforts to subject AI image generators to an “artistic-experimental stress test”.
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He not only wants to check which images can be created with artificial intelligence, but also examine the consequences for photographers and society.
Eldagsen traveled to London for the award ceremony and also gave his “acceptance speech” on stage – albeit without an invitation. Still, the other side seems open to deepening the conversation as well.
While Eldagsen’s entry was removed from the Sony competition website, it was in line with his wishes not to be part of it, organizers told the BBC. “We also look forward to an in-depth discussion on the subject and have responded to Boris’ request for dialogue by preparing a special question and answer session with him for our website.” The AI dialogue in the world of photography seems finally opened.
