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Comment by mmmmmbop | Hacker News Reader

To me, this just seems like a publicity stunt by the artist. Looking at the other images in the category [0], at least three of them are heavily edited. I see no reason why editing his image with AI-assisted tools should automatically disqualify the artist, unless the contest terms prohibit that, of which I see no mention in the article.

What's left is an artist who sets up the contest organizers by

• happily accepting the selection of his work on his website a month before the event (without a mention of intending to refuse the prize),

• then literally the night the before the event, publishing an "open letter" about refusing the prize on the website,

• and finally, showing up uninvited on stage to make his speech about refusing the prize.

This is a clever way of increasing his name awareness by riding the AI art controversy wave, for sure.

[0] https://archive.is/pH3Jb

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> I see no reason why editing his image with AI-assisted tools should automatically disqualify the artist, unless the contest terms prohibit that, of which I see no mention in the article.

He didn't edit an image so much as generate it. His work is closer to a digital painting (from a Wacom tablet, say), than a color-corrected, cropped, then filtered photograph. Everyone else started their process with capturing light from a camera.

And he says as much on his own website:

> I call my images “images”. They are synthetically produced, using “the photographic” as a visual language. They are not “photographs”.

> Participating in open calls, I want to speed up the process of the Award organisers to become aware of this difference and create separate competitions for AI-generated images.

https://www.eldagsen.com/sony-world-photography-awards-2023/

This is all addressed in the article.

(1) He says specifically that he intended it as a stunt

(2) He didn't edit any image with AI, he generated it from nothing with text.

As it was intended to be a photo competition, he felt that AI images don't deserve to win "photography" competitions.

----

Often the only way to secure anything is to try and break it. This is what we do with penetration testing in technology systems.

The problem is that the organizers aren't being proactive, so sometimes the only next step is some grey-hat stepping in to wave a big flag and saying, "hey, you might want to fix this"

Uhhh, “is this box poppable” is a whole lot less subjective than this.

The question remains, if you think your image is not a photo, why submit it to a photography contest?

I don’t think this question does remain. The answer is: to help other people understand that the image is not a photo.

The point of a stunt like this is to prove that a non-photo can win a photography contest, and to highlight how absurd that is.

Ruining someone else’s contest just to make your point is what people would call a ‘douche move’.

Most forms of protest must by definition cause inconvenience in the short term to create the possibility of positive change in the long term.

Would it have been better if someone had earnestly submitted an AI “photo” and accepted the prize quietly instead?

Reducing this to just a “douche move” seems to miss the forest for the trees. The contest will cease to exist or at minimum cease to have any value/meaning if AI submissions become the norm. An alternate framing is that such a form of protest is a necessary inoculation to prevent infinite “douche moves” going forward.

It’s a douche move because it’s ruining something that is based on trust by betraying that trust. That’s not a challenge, it’s not helping anyone, it’s not high and mighty, it’s just that, a douche move.

Look at how much praise athletes got by proving they could win contests using doping. They got none because it’s a douche move, even if it’s technically not illegal it’s still cheating, even if they never pick up the prize it’s still ruining the contest. Everyone can imagine you can win a race on doping, nobody learned anything.

Cleverness of self-promotion does not preclude cleverness (or soundness) of argument.

That's kind of a "tu quoque" analysis of what's going on here.

Anyway. People who use AI editing tools are at least starting with a photograph, or a collection of photographs, presumably. It is now impossible to tell, by simple visual inspection, if something is a photograph or was created from image generation tools. That's historic.

You can tell the image is AI generated by looking at the fingers resting on the shoulder. The woman’s right hand has no fingernails and a claw index finger, her left hand has a wobbly and twisted pinky, a bendy ring finger and a squashed middle finger.

Art is a publicity stunt. Banksy proves it. Nice try to denigrate it by shoving it your little mental box though. I enjoy being fun at parties.

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