Photographer Disqualified From AI Image Contest After Winning With Real Photo

[bleirer]

Good point. I get protest and civil disobedience and sometimes I admire it but other times I think about the rule breaking and potential harm, so a not bright line. The true winner of the ai, that poor bot, didn't get the credit it deserved.

 

[Craig Yuill]

If I understand the contest being discussed, the rules said only ai images could be entered. I think don't enter a contest if you won't follow the rules. Maybe the photo wasn't good enough to win a real photo contest.

The funny thing is that some photographers think that using tools like Topaz Photo AI to remove noise and sharpen detail is akin to using AI to completely generate an image from scratch. Following that logic, one just has to apply Adobe’s AI-powered denoising feature in LrC, or DxO PhotoLab, or Topaz AI products, etc. to a regular photo and it should qualify for this contest.

 

[Rick S]

My opinion. AI may be art, but by default to me, AI generated images are not photographs.

 

[bleirer]

I agree if there is no light there is no photograph. The gray area is when there is a photograph that is then manipulated with ai tools.

 

[bleirer]

The funny thing is that some photographers think that using tools like Topaz Photo AI to remove noise and sharpen detail is akin to using AI to completely generate an image from scratch. Following that logic, one just has to apply Adobe’s AI-powered denoising feature in LrC, or DxO PhotoLab, or Topaz AI products, etc. to a regular photo and it should qualify for this contest.

I guess we'd have to read the rules to find that out. Doesn't sound like it though.

 

[Rick S]

The funny thing is that some photographers think that using tools like Topaz Photo AI to remove noise and sharpen detail is akin to using AI to completely generate an image from scratch. Following that logic, one just has to apply Adobe’s AI-powered denoising feature in LrC, or DxO PhotoLab, or Topaz AI products, etc. to a regular photo and it should qualify for this contest.

Each of those in my mind are "digital darkroom" tools. The object is a photograph. AI generated images were never a photograph and a photograph manipulated in the digital darkroom will never be an AI generated image. Again as always, my opinion.

 

[John Woodworth]

...AI generated images were never a photograph...

To the contrary...An AI image can be derived from many images, some or all of which can be photographs.

 

[Patrick M]

Define AI? It’s a computer program….with a degree of complexity admittedly.
when my camera locks on to a moving bird and I take a shot, is that using AI? Maybe. It’s the future .. where sophisticated conputers programs assist us humans…. Focus tracking,
… de-noise … merging multiple images for that panorama, macros using multiple layers of images.
It’s not the future. It’s now.

 

[bleirer]

There is a grey line. Look at generative expand when you straighten a shot and have edges to fill, or want more room on the right, those trees photoshop invents do not belong to us, do they? Maybe they are based on our pixels but they are AI generated.

 

[DavidT]

Love it. It wasn’t about the win it was about proving a point.

 

[JoPoV]

Rules are something humans make up. The photographer had a point to make. The photographer made the point. It would not have been made by grumbling about Skynet quietly at home in the studio.

Love it. It wasn’t about the win it was about proving a point.

Indeed. I think It's all it was about : an artisitc act in an appropriate context (not an artistic image).
Was it a pipe or not ?
It seems the pipe won ! (the contest). Or not a pipe ?
And the creator of this act won, given the noise it generated.

And if you look at this image you can notice too that there is no head ...