Boris Eldagsen refuses his award at the Sony World Photography Competition 2023

The Sony World Photography Competition 2023 award ceremony was held in London this week. The German photography artist Boris Eldagsen won the creative category in the competition for PSEUDOMNESIA | The Electricia. However, at the award ceremony, Boris Eldagsen publicly refused to accept the award stating that his work was actually created by the AI pattern generator DALL-E2.

 

Although the conference originally did not invite Boris Eldagsen to the stage, he made a public speech on the stage by himself. Moreover, he shared his speech public on social networking sites. Eldagsen said, “Thank you very much for selecting my work and creating this historic moment. This is the first ever AI-generated image and won an internationally renowned ‘photography’ competition. How many people know or Suspect this is an AI-generated image? It looks kind of weird, right?”

 

Being different entities, AI images and photos should not compete with each other in such competitions, Eldagsen emphasized. Further, he said that he would not accept this award since AI is not photography.

 

Eldagsen’s behavior and views compelled the photography community to think about whether AI-generated images should compete with traditional photography, and whether the definition of photography needs to be re-examined.