German photographer Boris Eldagsen says he wanted to test the practices of the prestigious competition and spark a discussion about the role of artificial intelligence in art.
German artist Boris Eldagsen declined to accept an award at the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards after dramatic events.
Eldagsen admitted that his work The Electrician is a creation of artificial intelligence.
Eldagsen says he wanted to test the practices of the prestigious competition and spark a discussion about the role of artificial intelligence in art.
He himself is critical of the matter.
– Images created with artificial intelligence should not compete with real photos for these awards. They are different things – AI-generated images are not photographs – and that’s why I don’t want to accept the award, he said.
In his statement, Eldagsen also said that “there is something that doesn’t feel right” in the image created by artificial intelligence.
According to the organizers of the competition, the respected art photographer Eldagsen had said that he used artificial intelligence in his work, but he had not said that the entire work was created with artificial intelligence.
The organizers justified the victory of The Electrician by saying that it is a “touching black and white portrait of two women of different generations that evokes the visual look of family portraits of the 1940s”.
The work on Eldagsen’s website (you will switch to another service) is, however, part of a wider series of images of “false memories” created by artificial intelligence.
Helsingin Sanomat was the first to report on the matter.