German Photographer Refuses Award for His AI “Photo”
Boris Eldagsen submitted an AI-generated image to the Sony World Photography Awards just to be “a cheeky monkey,” but he didn’t think he’d actually win.
Rhea Nayyar
Boris Eldagsen’s “The Electrician” (2022) generated by Dall-E 2 (image courtesy the artist)
Could you imagine losing an art competition to a robot? It’s happened before, and it happened again when Boris Eldagsen, a career photographer from Berlin, Germany, submitted an AI-generated image for the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) under the Creative category. Eldagsen claims that he disclosed to both Sony and the competition organizer, Creo Arts, that his work was made using AI, but neither would outright acknowledge it until he took matters into his own hands.