(Paris) German artist Boris Eldagsen sparks controversy in the world of photography after being awarded at the Sony World Photography Awards with a work generated by artificial intelligence.
The jury initially accused the artist of “deliberately” misleading behavior, before retracting in a later statement.
Mr. Eldagsen had defended himself by claiming to have always been transparent about the nature of his work, but decided on Tuesday to refuse his reward.
Mid-March, the work of Boris Eldagsen – a sepia-toned image of two women and named Pseudomnesia: The Electrician – won the Sony World Photography Awards Creative Award.
After explaining in interviews that he wanted to provoke a debate on the place of AI, Eldagsen said last week that “AI-generated images and photographs should not compete together in an award like this” .
“I submitted my application like a little trickster (“as a cheeky monkey”), to see if the competitions were prepared for the arrival of these works. They are not,” he said.
The jury replied that they had removed the work “in accordance with his wishes”, but that “given his actions and […] of his deliberate attempts to mislead us”, he was “no longer in a position to enter into a constructive dialogue with him”.
Many photographers worry that artificial intelligence threatens their craft by allowing anyone to generate stunning images from descriptive text.
The very rapid development of image generators has already given rise to several legal actions, because these tools are “trained” with gigantic databases of works found on the Internet, and often protected by copyright. .
Already last year, the art world was wondering after an image generated by artificial intelligence won a prize in Colorado.