A Photographer Wins a Top Prize in an A.I. Competition for His Non-A.I. Image

raydm6 said:
Talk about turning the tables :)
news.artnet.com

Photographer Wins Top Prize in an A.I. Competition for Non-A.I. Image

A real photograph entered by Miles Astray into the category of the 1839 Awards for images generated by A.I. won a jury award.
news.artnet.com news.artnet.com
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Dear raydm6,

I get that he blatantly violated the rules, but I find tremendous irony in 2 things. One, it was deemed the best picture period, and two, they couldn't even tell it was real instead of fake. The second one scares me a bit. I think AI will become a larger problem in the not-too-distant future as people find ways to use manipulated images to manipulate people.

At my age I always knew that even actual photographs from years ago had some component of editing done to them before they were printed in most cases. I'm sure there a few SOOC iconic images, but most were processed in the darkroom. With AI I worry that completely false stories will be easy to tell. But maybe i worry too much and I'm just becoming an old fart?

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA :)
 
Image manipulation is as old as photography itself. I like the pic of the flamingo, but am guessing that it was heavily tweaked in photo software to achieve the bleached out background of sea and beach while retaining vibrant colors in the body of the bird. In general, I think AI image creation is creepy and as the ability to create images improves I wonder if it will be possible to ascertain "real" from "fake" images. I also wonder whether what I assume to be a heavily edited flamingo pic is more "real" than than an AI image.
I remember a lab class in photo printing I took a long time ago, dodging and burning exposures to create the contrast that I wanted in a print. The finished print looked very different than the one I did not dodge and burn.
 
I think that image creation is very different from image editing: AI image generation has some potential to destroy electronic/digital picture taking in the general population. Why bother plunking serious money in DSLR/RF/mirrorless gear when a remote server can generate a comparable output for peanuts? Or even transform the small phone picture you just took into a giant printable well defined image using it as a seed?

Of course, devil is in the details and AI is far from able to recreate the finest nuances of a good lens/sensor combo, yet. But in the near future?

Also, I think that traditional film photography is relatively safe: it is niche already, and if well executed, a wet printed output is extremely hard to emulate digitally anyway.
 
I have seen a lot of AI images, but none captures the look of the grain in Tri-X or other films yet, possibly because it has not been attempted on a large scale. I think AI will get there soon and will make images like The Electrician (2022) even tougher to distinguish from film/historical photos. I generally am a lousy B&W photographer, but love the look of Tri-X
 
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To paraphrase Shakespeare, you lot protest too much!

The motion picture has been around almost as long as photography, and was invented in 1888.* But people know whether they're watching real life in a documentary video or the fakery of a movie. And the same is true for writing - we rarely confuse news with fiction.

It all depends on context. Presented with a moving image or a piece of writing with no clues (why it was created and by whom, and from where and when?), then we are rightly confused. But how often does that happen?

But still photographic images are often treated differently - and ARE often presented without context, like this flamingo photo. Think of all the photos in the RFF galleries - most have no context. That doesn't happen with video clips nor text - both of which invariably have accompanying info for context.

So as a consequence many photographers view technology like Frankenstein's monster, and attack it like a mob with pitchforks! Photoshop, digital cameras, now AI... Witness the comments in this thread: users of AI are amoebas, AI is "creepy", AI will destroy photography!

The problem isn't technology - it's YOU. You need to change how you think about photos. Stop treating a photo as some kind of unique thing that somehow magically tells the viewer everything about itself, including how and why it was taken. Like every other object in existence, that's impossible!

I'm a contemporary art photographer, and every time my photos are published or exhibited there's always context: an accompanying project statement, essay, captions, related objects and/or a talk... maybe the location gives further clues.

Am I worried about AI? Yes - but not because it'll mean the death of photography (it won't)! My concern is more real: AI will change your life and mine massively and dramatically over the next few years: for example, the Institute for Public Policy Research states that 8 million jobs in the UK are at risk from AI - that's 25 per cent of our working population!

_______
*Not Edison (who wrongly took all the credit) but Louis Le Prince - a Frenchman living in London.
 
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A few years back, I had a photo disqualified at my local village fete because the judges thought it was Photoshopped. It wasn’t. The subject was a Queen's Jubilee street party in the village. Queen Elizabeth II was not actually present, but the lady I photographed was wearing a QEII mask. So in a sense it did involve some falsification analogous to AI, though not by me. What's the morality of that?
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