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Swedish artist Annika Nordenskiöld has won the world’s first artificial intelligence art award at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale with a life-like image of sisters cuddling an octopus, which she created using computer prompts.
Twin Sisters in Love (2023) by Annika Nordenskiöld.Credit: Ballarat International FotoBiennale
Accepting the $2000 first prize on Sunday from Sweden for the winning image Twin Sisters in Love (2023), Nordenskiöld said: “I understand the fear of AI and find it somewhat healthy. But I see it more like a colleague I am working with.”
“None of these places, people or creatures exist in the physical realm,” said the artist who recently had an exhibition of her work in Stockholm called We don’t exist, and is about to publish her third book using text prompts to create photo-like images.
“Many people say my pictures make them uncomfortable … When I explain that AI creates them as a kind of collage… many laugh, others are distressed and find them disgusting,” she said of the pictures she has created using the AI program Midjourney.
The organisers of the Ballarat festival hope the inaugural AI prize, Prompted Peculiar, a world first for an international photography festival, will open debate about the difference between photography and what they call “promptography.”
The term was coined this year when German photographer and judge at the Ballarat festival Boris Eldagsen turned down first prize in the creative open category of the Sony World Photography Awards because his image “The Electrician” was generated by AI, and in his words, was “not photography”.
Photographer Boris Eldagsen (left) and the image he created using AI, “The Electrician.”Credit: Boris Eldagsen
“At the time, I was considered a fire starter in the photography world in opening up this conversation on ‘promptography’, but now I am seen as the Che Guevara of analogue photographers and how we approach the elephant in the room – AI-generated images,” he said.
“Now the default position for when you look at pictures online will be to assume they are artificially generated – rarely are they fact-checked … which presents a problem for picture editors, photographers, developers, AI experts and social media consumers the world over.”
Eldagsen, who was joined on the judging panel by Una Rey, editor of Artlink magazine and Ballarat International Foto Biennale CEO Vanessa Gerrans, says an international roundtable conversation on photography is needed.
“A photographer goes out into the world and shoots what they see by chance in a certain place, but nowadays, a ‘promptographer’ can stay in a darkened room and create a computer-generated image. Seeing is no longer believing it is real,” he said.
He suggested a code of ethics for photographers with perhaps watermarks to ensure authenticity of photos may be necessary.
With photography co-ops like Magnum, and lawyers the world over seeking to clarify copyright laws of photographed material, his fellow judge, Gerrans said they were concerned about the potential to create disinformation.
“There are clearly unresolved issues around moral rights and consent, these are the conversations we need to start having so we can make sure we’re primed and acting ethically and responsibly,” Gerrans said.
As new technology impacts visual culture, Prompted Peculiar is an invitation to debate where this
new art of “promptography” belongs, she said at the end of a weekend of public forums in Ballarat, which covered these topics.
Lawyer Alana Kushnir, who helped work out the terms and conditions of the competition which attracted entries from all over the world, said it was a courageous move on behalf of a photography festival to engage with AI.
“We don’t have much guidance when it comes to the law in this space. We had to ask ourselves from an art history position, what is the difference between a photo and an image.
“There are parallels to when the camera was first invented – artists felt threatened. It will take time for the terms around IT and AI to align better,” Kushnir said.
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