Debate rages over photographer who wins contest with a photo of Artificial Intelligence

It looks like a picture of Grandma when she was young, maybe a little tense looking up to the right at someone who said something to her. And behind her mother taking her by the shoulders giving her a kiss on the back as if to say, “Be quiet, don’t be upset, how beautiful you are.” A photo of memories in short. From the features one would also be inclined to indicate the nationality: Germans or so. It is the photo that won in the category “Creativity” the Sony World Photography Awards, among the biggest awards in photography in the world, and the author is Boris Eldagsen, who called it Pseudomnesia - The Electrician. But Boris didn’t take a shot for this image: he clicked, because this photo, which looks like a vintage photo, is a fake image created by the artificial intelligence of a computer that was commissioned to take it. And the Treccani on the meaning of the title also helps us understand the immediately stated intent: “Pseudomneṡìa - In psychiatry, a form of paramnesia consisting of hallucinations of memory whereby elements of the imagination give rise to memories of situations that the subject has never experienced, and which may take the form of false recognition, or as false memories, sometimes produced by an emotional state or delusional activity, at other times by fantastic activity covering gaps in memory.”

Here the “fantastic” activity was done by Stable Diffusion, one of the most technologically advanced Artificial Intelligence deep machine learning models to create images from input, in this case from the photographer, a written command. In theory it could also ’paint.’ And as early as last year, controversy erupted over the use of artificial intelligence in competitions or art after the victory of a work created by Midjourney at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition.

The Sony World Photography Awards jury however liked the work, and the winner’s award citation reads, “a poignant black-and-white portrait of two women, reminiscent of the visual language of family portraits from the 1940s.” A prize that even more provocatively Eldagsen publicly declined in order to make his purpose better understood, proposing to donate it to a photography festival in Ukraine.

Boris Eldagsen, who has been working for 35 years, explicitly stated on his website that “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. The photography world needs an open discussion about what we want to consider photography and what we don’t. Is the umbrella of photography big enough to invite AI images in or would that be a mistake?” With my rejection of the award I hope to accelerate this debate."

The issue, however, is also controversial because it appears that the organizers had known about the help of AI before the winners were announced, at the stage of finding “guarantees” from photographers on the work they submitted for the creativity section. Explaining how things stand, a spokesman for the prize organization spoke in the Guardian. “In our correspondence,” he said, “Eldagsen explained how after ’two decades of photography, my artistic focus has shifted more to exploring the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence generators’ and the additional emphasis on the image depends heavily on its ’wealth of photographic knowledge. The competition category in which Eldagsen participated accommodates various experimental approaches to image-making, from cyanotypes and rayographs to cutting-edge digital practices. Therefore, following our correspondence with Boris and the assurances he provided, we felt that his entry met the criteria for this category and supported his participation. Moreover, we looked forward to engaging in a more in-depth discussion on this topic and welcomed Boris’ desire for dialogue [...]. Since he has now decided to decline his award, we have suspended our activities with him and, in line with his wishes, removed him from the competition. Given his actions and subsequent statement noting his deliberate attempts to mislead us, and thus invalidating the assurances he has provided, we no longer feel able to engage in meaningful and constructive dialogue with him. We recognize the importance of this topic and its impact on image-making today. We look forward to exploring this topic further through our various channels and programs and welcome conversation about it. Although elements of artificial intelligence practices are relevant in the artistic contexts of image making, the awards have always been and will continue to be a platform to promote the excellence and skill of photographers and artists working in the medium.”

In short, the debate is as timely as ever. How much can technology and the progression of science be used in what we call ’art’? Painters in the past have been valued as good as the more they could redraw the somatic features and contours of the real, something that now a printer can reproduce flawlessly and with A.I. create from scratch with remarkable results. As in the case at hand.

What is left for the artist? What is left for the viewer? One will have to wonder each time if it was the finger and hand of man that produced the work one is looking at, or will we also be able to define art as man’s ability in being able to program the ’software’ that will go into creating the works? Eldagsen said he attended to raise the question of using such tools in photography but the point applies to all other fields in the art scene. How much could a museum be filled with works not made by man? Do we exalt in museums the beauty that is man-made or the beauty itself? How much will the artificial’ be able to be the child of its own programmer? Even if we exclude non-man-made works from competitions should we set limits on their uses? How much of the artificial’s flair will be able to be attributed to those who operate the controls? This was an inescapable problem that we had to ask ourselves sooner or later. And we have to do it now.

Pictured: left Boris Elgadsen, right the winning image.

Debate rages over photographer who wins contest with a photo of Artificial Intelligence

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