A photographer named Miles Astray recently caused a stir when he submitted a real photograph rather than an AI-generated image to the 1839 Color Photography Awards.
What did the photographer do? AI programs like ChatGPT from OpenAI are becoming increasingly popular, which is often a thorn in the side of artists. Photographer Miles Astray therefore submitted a real photo instead of one created by AI to the 1839 Color Photography Awards competition in the AI category. His photo showed a flamingo on the beach.
His cheating was not immediately noticed by the jury, which led to him taking bronze place and winning the People’s Vote Award with his real photo.
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I wanted to turn the story around
Why did the photographer take part in the competition? His main motivation was to show that nature could still beat a machine, he told PetaPixel. He also said that he had recently seen AI-generated images beating real photos in competitions. For this reason, he wanted to turn the story around and submitted a real photo to the competition.
How did the scam come to light? Miles Astray himself revealed his deception by announcing on X after his victory that he had won the competition, although his submission was a real photo. The competition organization then learned of the matter and disqualified him.
Nevertheless, he is happy that his experiment confirmed his hypothesis that there is nothing more fantastic and creative than Mother Nature herself.
You can see the photographer’s photo here on x.com:
What does the organization say about the cheating? The competition is judged by people who work for the New York Times, Getty Images, Phaidon Press and others, among others. None of these people are said to have noticed this fraud.
Organizers told PetaPixel that while they appreciated his powerful message, they had to disqualify Miles Astray for fairness reasons.
The reasoning behind the disqualification was that each category had to meet certain criteria and his submission did not meet these. Nevertheless, they hope that this sends a message of hope to other photographers who are concerned about AI.
The opposite happened last year at the Sony World Photography Awards. An artist won a photography award, but declined because the picture was not his but an AI. You can read how this came about here: Artist pretends to be a “cheeky monkey”, wins prestigious photography award – declines because his picture was made by an AI