Sony World Photography Awards 2023
PSEUDOMNESIA | The Electrician, by Boris Eldagsen
Every year, photographers from across the world gather for the Sony World Photography Awards. The event attracts both seasoned photographers and those just starting out. The success of a photographer might be catapulted by taking home a category prize. The 2023 Open Category Awards have been controversial this year.
The Competition
There was a free-to-enter category at the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards named "Open." There were ten distinct categories from which entrants may select. Images submitted to the Creative category must have been shot in 2022. The Creative category may have had hundreds or even thousands of submissions, but only 14 could make the cut for the final selection.
The Winner
The 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Creative category winner is German photo-media artist Boris Eldagsen, according to a press announcement issued on March 14th. His winning black & white photograph, titled "PSEUDOMNESIA | The Electrician," is a dramatic portrait of two ladies. This photograph is eerily reminiscent of the traditional family photos of the 1940s.
The Problem
Boris's winning photo has a lot of attention to detail, especially in the skin texture and the fingers. This is not because the image was captured with an antiquated camera or lens, but rather because it was not a photograph at all. The image was created by Boris Eldagsen using the Open AI photo tools using his own inputs. He even went so far as to contact the awards committee to outright reveal that his submission was an AI-generated fake. The Sony World Photography Awards missed a great opportunity to recognize this. Almost three weeks after the announcement, their website still has Boris listed as a winner. Boris gave an interview to Talking Pictures, where he discussed the process of making the image with the help of artificial intelligence.
The Sony World Photography Awards were announced on April 2, and on April 1st, Boris Eldagsen released a comment about his photograph "The Electrician," which had won the Creative section in the Open category. To clear things up, he revealed the AI aspect of the image in an Instagram post on March 14th, well before April Fool's Day.
You can read his entire statement here.
Moving Forward
The rise of powerful AI-generated image tools like Midjourney and DALL-E 2 has made it harder for photo contests to tell real photos from those manufactured by computers. This presents a serious problem for future photography contests. Creative and amazingly realistic as they may be, AI-generated photos are made in a fundamentally different way than conventional photography.
Having well-defined criteria for what counts as a "photo" might be a good answer for photo contests. For instance, some contests may insist that all submitted photos be taken the old-fashioned way, without the use of any computer-generated imagery. This might involve regulations like mandating photographs to be recorded using conventional cameras or barring the usage of AI-generated features in post-processing.
One alternative is for photo contests to include a new category for AI-generated pictures. As a result, these pieces may be entered into contests alongside traditional photography while yet being easily distinguishable. Photo contests might promote more research and experimentation with AI by designating a special category for photographs produced by AI.
In the end, it will be up to photo contests to address the difficulties introduced by AI-generated pictures. Competitions may embrace the exciting potential of this new technology while also ensuring that winning pieces are genuinely photography by establishing explicit rules and criteria or proposing new categories.
