>“The work… is the result of a complex interplay of prompt engineering, inpainting and outpainting that draws on my wealth of photographic knowledge. For me, working with AI image generators is a co-creation, in which I am the director. It is not about pressing a button – and done it is. It is about exploring the complexity of this process, starting with refining text prompts, then developing a complex workflow, and mixing various platforms and techniques. The more you create such a workflow and define parameters, the higher your creative part becomes.”
The image is fairly derivative, and doesn’t demonstrate any traits of a well crafted generative image, nor does it show signs of the creator’s ability to draw in a topic, emotion or theme, other than ‘oooh spooky old photo’.
It also doesn’t show off their knowledge of photographic and ai technique like they claim. The scratches and effects look forced, and the hands and faces just look like classic ai.
It’s okay graphic design. He even goes on to say it’s not a photograph.
If this isn’t an April fool’s joke, then Sony have seriously tarnished the reputation of the award.
It's not an April Fool's joke; it was an intentional effort to deceive the competition to highlight the fact that such competitions aren't well-prepared for the addition of AI to the artist's toolbelt.
The artist refused the award, and declared it was their intent to highlight this concern.
What efforts like this are missing is publishing a cryptographic hash before engaging in the deception. Otherwise it can seem like the author intentionally decided to mislead but might have changed their intention after winning.
Publishing something openly like e1c7aa9150766bd5279b54951e3828ed9c19367af21f03f669eb586bd54c13b1 which can later be verified once "revealed".
$ echo "I, CapableWeb, is gonna participate in Sony World Photography Award 2023 with a AI generated image in order to see if they are ready for AI generated images. 2023-04-14" | sha256sum
Don't really have to involve blockchain here (yet again), publishing on a website and letting Internet Archive archive it is good enough. Or even posting it on Twitter/HN/$social-media-with-edit-limit
It’s okay graphic design. He even goes on to say it’s not a photograph.
Well, that's the bit that I think is most odd here. It's not a photograph.
Whether if AI-generated images are fair game in art competitions in general, I guess that's up to the folks running the competitions, but I would think an AI-generated image would pretty clearly not be a valid entry for a photography contest. No more than a painting or a charcoal drawing.
>“The work… is the result of a complex interplay of prompt engineering, inpainting and outpainting that draws on my wealth of photographic knowledge. For me, working with AI image generators is a co-creation, in which I am the director. It is not about pressing a button – and done it is. It is about exploring the complexity of this process, starting with refining text prompts, then developing a complex workflow, and mixing various platforms and techniques. The more you create such a workflow and define parameters, the higher your creative part becomes.”
The image is fairly derivative, and doesn’t demonstrate any traits of a well crafted generative image, nor does it show signs of the creator’s ability to draw in a topic, emotion or theme, other than ‘oooh spooky old photo’.
It also doesn’t show off their knowledge of photographic and ai technique like they claim. The scratches and effects look forced, and the hands and faces just look like classic ai.
It’s okay graphic design. He even goes on to say it’s not a photograph.
If this isn’t an April fool’s joke, then Sony have seriously tarnished the reputation of the award.