This picture won a prize in an AI competition — but it's real
Miles Astray won a prize in an AI contest with a photo that wasn't generated by AI.
He later said it was a stunt to highlight the ethical issues of AI-generated images in contests.
Astray was disqualified but said a cofounder of the award praised his actions.
A photographer won a prize in a competition for AI-generated photographs — except the picture he submitted was real.
Miles Astray's image of a flamingo won third place in the AI-generated category of the 1839 Awards' Color Photography Contest last week.
But the photographer was later disqualified after he disclosed that he'd fooled the judges to make a point, CNN reported.
In an article for Fortune, Astray wrote that he "felt bad about leading the jury astray" with his stunt but wanted to highlight the ethical implications of AI-produced imagery.
The 38-year-old told The Guardian: "Of course, I deliberately chose a picture that is so surreal, to the point of unbelievable, that it could easily be attributed to AI being at play."
In a way, Astray's attempt to dupe the judges could be viewed as a form of performance art. In his Fortune article, Astray noted that AI-generated images had been in the news because they'd won photo contests they "were not supposed to compete in," which he said showed how fast AI had proliferated in recent years.
But Astray chose to come clean after the winners were announced and informed the Creative Resource Collective, the organization behind the awards.
In an Instagram post caption last week, he wrote: "I entered this actual photo into the AI category of the 1839 Awards to prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance, that Mother Nature and her human interpreters can still beat the machine, and that creativity and emotion are more than just a string of digits."
Astray added that he was surprised by the reaction from Lily Fierman, a cofounder and director of the awards, whom he said "remarked that she appreciates the powerful message and that it was an important and timely statement."
The AI category was won by Robyn Finlayson.
The Creative Resource Collective didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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