the german artist Boris Eldagsenwhich sparked controversy this week by winning the prestigious photography award Sony World Photography Awards with an image that had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), now indicated that these technologies pose a threat “for democracy and photojournalism”while acknowledging that relations between him and the organization that awards the distinction have been strained.
The organizing firm of the contest issued a statement critical of the winner these days in which it said: “We no longer feel that we can engage in a meaningful and constructive dialogue with him.” Shortly after, the artist gave an interview to the English newspaper The Guardian where he expressed his perplexity at the company’s statement: “I don’t know why they behaved like this,” he said.
The German photographer was recognized with the Sony World Photography Awards, in the “Creative” category, endowed with $5,000 for a work made with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and later indicated that his participation in the contest was intended to set up a debate.
“I applied to find out if contests are set up to encounter AI-made images. They are not. Thank you for selecting my image and making this a historic moment as it is the first Al-generated image to win in a prestigious contest international photography”, the artist himself wrote on his Instagram account @boriseldagsen, which he titled “Rejection of the Sony award”, along with the winning image.
Eldagsen submitted to the contest the image titled “Pseudomnesia/The Electricity”, where you can see two women in different stages of their lives, both with a visual aesthetic of the 40s, made by AI image generators, combining various techniques, he later revealed. Women never existed.
“I love photography, I love generating images with AI, but I have realized that they are not the same. One is writing with light, one is writing with directions. They are connected, the visual language was learned from photography, but now AI has a life of its own. If people want to shut up and not talk about it, that’s wrong,” he told The Guardian newspaper.
Eldagsen grew up in southwestern Germany, studying philosophy at the University of Cologne, then photography and fine art in Mainz. His work was always more conceptual than figurative, long before he started working with AI. “My approach to photography was psychological and philosophical. Having that background, AI fascinated me. It was built from the collective unconscious. I also saw that the way it works can be related to Plato’s theory of ideas,” he highlighted in the interview.
The artist also indicated that he does not see the process of building an AI image as dehumanizing, or even as one in which the human being is left out. “I don’t see it as a threat to creativity. For me, it’s really liberating me. All the limits I had in the past (material limits, budgets) no longer matter. And for the first time in history, the older generation has a advantage, because AI is a knowledge accelerator,” he said.
According to the photographer, the real challenge with AI is not that it can pierce human creativity as something unique and unfathomable, or even that it can destroy jobs and potentially entire industries – although that’s not good either. “The threat – Eldagsen assured – is for democracy and photojournalism; we have so many false images that we need to find a way to show people what is what”.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
