The title says it all. Personally I agree with the guy who created it, photography and AI are different things.
April 17, 2023
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At least he had the decency to own up to it and refuse his prize.
And, as an aside, I wasn't impressed by the photo myself.
Alan
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I was, am, for several reasons, impressed by the image itself, by the fact that it ended up 1st and by the fact that its a synthetic.
Still this is merely the beginning stage of the ai mess and nothing to look forward to, falsify pictures, falsify footage and what more.
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Which is why photography is 'art'. Different people have different impressions. This is a good thing.
So, extending that, can AI produce "art"? It appears it can. So, is it invalid for it to win a photo competition?
Alan
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Impressed… not in the slightest.
Anyone with half a brain could tell that there was something fishy going on with that photo.What the heck were they smokin’.
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This story has been kicking around for a couple of weeks. When notified of the selection error, the Sony Contest organizers did absolutely nothing for several weeks — and that nothing included leaving the image up on the website and inviting the dude to London for the winners ceremony, despite him telling them that he won’t accept it.
The full image (this is a crop) is available to see. When you do, look at the hands. Seriously, whomever the judges of this were should be ashamed and, frankly, Sony as sponsor, should be equally angry both at the judging and the response.
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His stated purpose was to generate debate about AI in photography. Mission accomplished!
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Hands can actually look like that and much worse even if under the strain of arthritis.
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with a detached wrist 😂
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Where do you see that?
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Not a bad composition and idea. I think it was a guided generation, so not generated by AI from the scratch.
I don't think there's a danger to the real photography as art, but AI will be getting better and there will be issues with fake images.
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It's an important conversation to have.
Personally, I think the standard is pretty easy to define. Photography is the process of making durable images by exposing a light-sensitive medium to light. By light, I'm referring to electromagnetic radiation. Yes, x-ray machines the create film or digital images are a form of photography.
I also think we have room for a progression away from pure photography to an image that isn't photography. For example, we already call a set of bracketed exposures taken of the same subject over a period of time, high dynamic range or HDR photography. An image made by blending two or more photos made of subjects in different places at different times is called a composite photograph. If we take small portions of thousands of different photos and blend those into a new image, we call it a montage.
The process used to make the image - not the intent of the image-maker - is what we should base our understanding of AI image-making on. It doesn't even matter if the resulting image looks photorealistic. Frankly, that is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the image is a photograph. Man Ray's rayographs didn't look like photos. At least, not the photos folks were used to seeing a hundred years ago. But he made them by exposing a light-sensitive paper to light. They are photographs. If an AI tool constructs an image that looks photorealistic but didn't create the image by exposing a light-sensitive medium to light, it's not a photo.
It's still an image. It may even be a brilliant piece of art, according to the public and critics. But it's not a photograph.
Which leads to a related issue. So many people want to shackle AI image-making and other methods of image-making with the burden of being prejudged as legitimate or illegitimate. An image-making process is devoid of any ethical value. There is nothing inherently good or bad about photography, painting, sketching or other image-making processes.
Ethical value resides in the actions a person takes. If the creator openly presents their image as what it is, the act of openness allows the viewing public to appreciate the work for what it is. This is a good thing. If the creator intentionally misrepresents their work as being something that it isn't, that is an act of deception. Deception, in and of itself, is not good.
By focussing on the process used to create the image and on the actions taken by the creator, we can have a productive discussion about new visual storytelling and artistic media as they emerge.
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Talking to computers generating art is just one of the many steps into the future :P
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i like to mess with AI, quite incredible the results you can get but it will put many jobs under pressure
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The key for me the line about being open; I'm not a big fan of AI, but I can accept it has a place so long as the creator is, indeed, honest. What bothers me is the prospect of traditional photographers spending time and effort to capture, say, a particularly rare and spectacularly sunset, only for somebody else to match of better it with the nonchalant tap of a button.
