AI-Generated Art Wins Competition, Artists Say They "Created Nothing"
Artificial intelligence continues to advance in all areas of life. There are the big-hitting advancements made by Google's Deep Mind, which has attained major milestones such as defeating the best human at the hugely complex game of Go, and which has also beaten us meat sacks at the video game StarCraft 2.
While these wins didn't generate that much controversy – although they certainly stirred up much discussion and generated reams of column inches – one recent AI story has stirred up much stronger feelings. This is because an artist using AI won a fairly popular arts competition, with some detractors accusing the winner of not really being an artist at all. Jason Allen won first place at the Colorado Sate Fair fine arts compeition, in the digital arts category. But it was the way he won that has stirred up debate. That's because Allen entered the competition using an AI-generated image (via IFL Science).
Related: I Used An AI To Create The Video Games Of My Dreams
Allen had been "exploring a special prompt" with an image-generating AI called Midjourney. He created hundreds of images using this AI, and spent weeks "fine tuning and curating" his images before choosing what he thought were the best to print onto canvas after he'd upscaled them using Gigapixel A.I. This comes from a Discord channel dedicated to Mijourney where Allen posts under the username Sincarnate.
He told the channel, upon learning of his win, "I've set out to make a statement using Midjourney in a competitive manner and wow! I could not be more excited about having won with my favorite piece: 'Theatre d'Opera Spatial'."
His artwork won out over 20 other artists in the "digitally manipulated photography" category and Allen was rewarded with a
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