German artist rejects AI-generated photo prize, sparks heated debate

A German artist has sparked an angry row after winning a prestigious photography award with work created by artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, Boris Eldagsen rejected Gong from the Sony World Photography Awards after stating that such competitions were not yet equipped to handle the participation of artificial intelligence.

Awards organizers initially accused the artist of “misleading” behavior, but dropped the accusation in a later statement after Eldagsen’s furious response on Tuesday.

Many photographers and artists fear that AI tools that allow anyone to create striking images with just a text prompt are threatening their livelihoods.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence image generators has already sparked lawsuits because the tools are “trained” on large numbers of images – many of which may be copyrighted.

An AI-created artwork won an award at the Colorado State Fair last year, prompting soul-searching in the art world.

In mid-March, the Sony World Photography Awards announced Eldagsen’s entry — a sepia-toned image of two women called “Pseudomnesia: The Electrician” — as the winner of its creative category.

At the time, Eldagsen gave interviews explaining how he had done the work and said he wanted to spark a conversation about artificial intelligence.

However, he wrote last week that “AI images and photography should not compete with each other for such an award” and declined the award.

“I applied to be a cheeky monkey to find out if the contests were ready for AI photos to enter. They are not,” he wrote.

The award body said in its initial response that it had looked forward to engaging the artist in a conversation about artificial intelligence, but withdrew the work “in accordance with his wishes”.

It said in a statement: “Given his actions and his subsequent statement stating his deliberate attempt to mislead us and thus invalidate the assurances he gave, we no longer feel we can have a meaningful and constructive dialogue with him.”

But Eldagsen wrote on his website that it was “nonsense” to suggest the award body was willing to participate.

“They had so many options to exploit this. They didn’t use any of them,” he wrote, accusing them of ignoring questions from the media and other photographers.

The organizers later sent a redacted version of the statement to AFP, removing the allegation that they had been misled, but insisting they had been willing to participate in the Eldagsen-AI debate.

Read all the Latest Tech News here.