A photographer submitted a real photograph to a contest for AI-generated pictures, and won the competition, as the judges believed it to be digitally made. Upon learning that the photographer, Miles Astray, had not used AI to produce the piece, he was disqualified.
Astray’s winning picture, a photograph of a flamingo whose head appears to be bent into its body, took first place in the AI category of the People’s Vote Award at the 1839 Photography Awards.
This year, the judges had also given Astray’s photograph, titled F L A M I N G O N E, a third-place prize in the AI category. The juried prizes are decided by representatives from the New York Times, the auction house Christie’s, the publishing house Phaidon, and elsewhere.
