Ha!

"In an unusual turn of events, one photographer has pushed back against AI by not only submitting, but winning a photo contest for generative images with a real photo that he took. Miles Astray’s “F L A M I N G O N E” (2022), featuring the lanky pink bird with its head hidden in its feathers as it was scratching its belly on a white-sand shore, was subsequently disqualified from the AI category of the 1839 Awards Color Photography Contest after being awarded third place by the jury and securing the people’s vote."

LMAOROTF!

I saw this when the story broke last week. Other than the cash grab aspect of these contests (which may be the only real reason for their existence), it's a mystery to me why they even have awards for AI generated images. The winner is the person who can best write prompts for the AI system? And that is somehow construed as practicing photography? Bizarre.

On a somewhat related note, I see that people have started complaining that Instagram is flagging their non-AI images as 'Made with AI' because of some metadata stored by Adobe when one uses Photoshop's AI-based tools, like generative fill. It seems that nobody really understands where the line should be drawn at this point. The whole thing is insane.

logan2z said:

the cash grab aspect of these contests (which may be the only real reason for their existence)

Click to expand...

That is pretty much the reason for being of just about any artistic contest, be it photography, painting, ect. The poetry world is rife with profit-making contests and pay-to-play publications.