Can you imagine losing an art contest to a robot? It is arrived before, and it happened again when Boris Eldagsen, a career photographer from Berlin, Germany, submitted an AI-generated image for the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) in the Creative category. Eldagsen claims he disclosed to Sony and competition organizer Creo Arts that his work was made using AI, but neither acknowledged it until he takes matters into his own hands.
Eldagsen’s “The Electrician” (2022), inspired by photos by Roger Ballen, was generated on Dall-E 2 last August using a combination of prompt engineering (finagling the right text prompts to be typed to get the most desirable generative outcomes), paintAnd overpainting.
When Eldagsen submitted “The Electrician” to three photography competitions, including the SWPA, he intended to test each competition’s juries to see if they could distinguish real photography from AI works.
“It wasn’t about winning anything,” he said Hyperallergic. “I was a photographer for 30 years before turning to AI and I am very involved in the German scene by organizing workshops, conferences and helping to draft proposals for legislation related to AI.”
As it turns out, SWPA Submission Guidelines had no clause on AI art and did not require RAW files from contestants or even finalists. Eldagsen said he received an email from the SWPA in January asking for more information about his entry, so he provided his social media accounts, where he shares many of his AI images.
“And then when in February they sent an email saying, ‘Congratulations, you won the Creative category of the open competition,’ I told them it was AI,” Eldagsen said, offering the idea of an open panel to recognize the proliferation of AI-generated work and the creation of a new category for AI-generated entries. According to Eldagsen, Sony’s contact replied that everything was fine and continued to offer him the prize even after he insisted that it be given to someone else.
In response to HyperallergicUpon request for comment from, a Creo Arts spokesperson said: “We had various correspondence with Boris prior to announcing him as the winner of the Creative category in the Open competition. Boris confirmed the “co-creation” of this image using AI. He has now decided to decline his award. We respect his decision and have therefore removed him from the competition.
The official press release announcing the 2023 SWPA winners was released on March 14, after which contest organizer Creo Arts contacted Eldagsen via email with inquiries about his winning entry. The artist gave them the same response he gave Sony, suggesting Creo use this submission as a starting point for conversations about AI media, but Creo said there was no immediate platform for such dialogue.
Eldagsen eventually took the stage at a London Hilton to publicly decline the award. Apparently they heard him loud and clear this time, as mentions of his name were quickly removed from the SWPA website and his ‘picture’ was quietly removed from display at London’s Somerset House without any communication or explanation.
“I didn’t plan from the start to be an asshole or to be rude and rude, but I genuinely care about the impact this will have on the photography scene and it needs to be talked about,” Eldagsen said. , frustrated that he had to go this far.
“And these awards are big in the world of photography, but they don’t care, it’s a business for them with a big name like Sony attached as a sponsor,” he added. “It could have been a great PR moment for them too, to introduce new regulations or elements in the awards, but they just don’t talk about it.”
