Boris Eldagsen, distinguished with the Sony World Award for the black and white image of two women from different generations, has put the prestigious award in a serious dilemma by acknowledging that the photo was created with artificial intelligence (AI) and simultaneously renouncing the award .
“AI and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this,” explained the German artist. “We are talking about different entities. AI is not photography. And therefore I do not accept this award.”
Eldagsen put the jury in a bind and asked them to analyze the enigmatic photo in detail, in which a young woman appears in the foreground and an older woman behind her: “One has the feeling that there is something that is not working with her, what is it?” Isn’t that so? That something is the fact that it is not a real photograph, but an image produced synthetically.”
The title chosen for the image, Pseudomnesia, was also a way of testing the jury and playing the role of the “cheeky monkey” in the competition: “I wonder if any of them knew, or at least suspected, that the image had been generated with artificial intelligence.
His decision to keep the secret until the end is due to the intention of turning the frustrated award into “a historic moment” that makes us reflect on the limits of artificial intelligence in artistic creation.
The controversy over Boris Eldagsen’s photography award resignation practically coincided with the uproar caused by the song Heart On My Sleeve, which was composed by an anonymous author signing as @ghostwriter977, who managed to clone the voices of Drake and The Weeknd using artificial intelligence , and that has risen to a viral phenomenon in the networks.
A spokesperson for the World Photography Organization acknowledged that Boris Eldagsen had confirmed that the award-winning photo had been “co-created” using AI at the time of receiving the news. The aforementioned spokesman recognized “the creative possibilities that open up with Artificial Intelligence generators”, but warned that in the case of the awarded images they should be recognized for “the weight of photographic knowledge”.
Boris Eldagsen’s decision has created a wide debate that goes beyond the world of photography. “The first big controversy arose in September 2022 when an image generated by AI won an art competition in the United States,” recalls Chis Vallance, a BBC technology expert. “But technological capacity is increasing week by week, and it is increasingly difficult for photographers and artists themselves to detect flaws in AI-generated images.”
“For some artists, it’s a new tool, perhaps a new category of art,” Vallance says. “For others, however, it is a threat that should be limited because it can replace the work of thousands of human creators.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project