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The stat about Ai art winning contests keeps bugging me | AI Art Debate - Free To Speak

The stat about Ai art winning contests keeps bugging me

I was reading a blog called Art In The Age Of Algorithms last week and saw that over 300 pieces of AI art have won or placed in juried competitions since 2022. One guy named Jason Allen took first place at the Colorado State Fair with his piece "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" and that really got me thinking. How do we even judge creativity when the person just typed prompts into Midjourney? Has anyone else seen a breakdown of how these contests are handling the rules going forward?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_drew1mo ago

Jason Allen's win at the Colorado State Fair was a big wake up call for a lot of people. I get why it bugs you, but I see it differently. The prompt typing is just the start, you still have to curate, edit, and pick the right one from dozens or hundreds of tries. That takes a real eye for composition and color, even if the computer does the heavy lifting. Plus most of those contest rules are still figuring themselves out, some are adding a "digital tools" category or requiring a human touch demonstration. I think the real test is whether the art makes you feel something, regardless of how it was made. The debate is messy but I don't think we should write off the process just because it's new.

amy_west1mo ago

Did anyone catch that article in The Verge where they interviewed the guy himself? He talked about how he entered it mostly to prove a point, not even expecting to win. I mean, I get where you're coming from with the curation and editing part, because I've messed around with those tools and yeah, you do go through a ton of junk to find one good image. But it still feels different than painting it yourself, you know? Like, the effort is shifted more to sorting and picking than actually making. I guess the feeling part is what matters most in the end, but I'm still not sure if the contest rules will ever really catch up to the tech.

aaronsullivan1mo ago

Wait did that winning piece turn out to be just a heavily filtered photo of actual theater stage they fed into the AI?