Photographer disqualified from AI image contest after winning with real photo

A photographer has been disqualified from a photo competition after his real photograph mistakenly won in the AI image category.

Miles Astray submitted a genuine, albeit surreal, photo of a flamingo into the AI category of the 1839 Color Photography Awards. The judges awarded it third place, and it also won the People's Vote Award, reports photography news site PetaPixel.

"I wanted to show that nature can still beat the machine and that there is still merit in real work from real creatives," Astray tells PetaPixel over email.

"After seeing recent instances of AI-generated imagery beating actual photos in competitions, I started thinking about turning the story and its implications around by submitting a real photo into an AI competition," he said.

The color photography contest is judged by people who work for The New York Times, Getty Images, Phaidon Press, Christie's, and Maddox Gallery, among others. None could apparently tell that Astray's photo was real.

The 1839 color photography contest has numerous categories with AI being unusual as it is the only one that is not camera-based.

The rest are more familiar photography subgenres such as "Architecture", "Still Life", and "Film/Analog."

In an email to PetaPixel, the competition's organizers stated that while they appreciate Astray's "powerful message," his entry has been disqualified out of fairness to the other artists.

"Our contest categories are specifically defined to ensure fairness and clarity for all participants," says a spokesperson.