Winner of major photography award refuses prize as entry was actually AI

Artificial intelligence has emerged as one of the biggest talking points of the year so far, following the emergence of ChatGPT and image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney.

It’s getting harder than ever before to tell real images from fake ones as a result – and nothing sums this up more than the latest news regarding a major photography prize.

Last week it was announced that German artist Boris Eldagsen’s entry had won the Sony World Photography Award.

The piece in question was titled Pseudomnesia: The Electrician and showed a haunting composition featuring two women in a ghostly green-tinged grey.

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Only, he’s now refused the prize and revealed that it was entirely the product of artificial intelligence.

Boris Eldagsen

The artist claimed he’d been a “cheeky monkey” and not been clear to the awards panel while submitting the entry, intending to make a point about the future of photography.

He thanked the judges for "selecting my image and making this a historic moment", while also questioning if any of them "knew or suspected that it was AI-generated" in a statement on his website.

"AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this," he wrote. "They are different entities. AI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award."

A spokesperson for the World Photography Organisation said that while he had told the board that the image was a ‘co-creation’ of AI, he hadn’t made it clear just how heavily it had been used.

"The creative category of the open competition welcomes various experimental approaches to image-making, from cyanotypes and rayographs to cutting-edge digital practices," their statement said.

"As such, following our correspondence with Boris [Eldagsen] and the warranties he provided, we felt that his entry fulfilled the criteria for this category, and we were supportive of his participation.

"Additionally, we were looking forward to engaging in a more in-depth discussion on this topic and welcomed Boris' wish for dialogue by preparing questions for a dedicated Q&A with him for our website,” it added.

"As he has now decided to decline his award, we have suspended our activities with him and in keeping with his wishes have removed him from the competition.”

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