This picture won a prize in an AI competition — but it’s real

• Miles Astray won a prize in an AI contest with a photograph that was not generated by AI. 
• He later revealed it was a stunt to highlight the ethical issues of AI-generated images in contests.
• Astray was disqualified but said a cofounder of the award praised his actions. 

A photographer won a prize in a competition for AI-generated photographs — except the picture he submitted was real.

Miles Astray’s image of a flamingo won third place in the AI-generated category of the 1839 Awards‘ Color Photography Contest last week.

However, the photographer told CNN that he was later disqualified after revealing he’d fooled the judges to make a point.

In an article for Fortune, Astray also wrote that he “felt bad about leading the jury astray” with his stunt but wanted to highlight the ethical implications of AI-produced imagery.

The 38-year-old told The Guardian: “Of course, I deliberately chose a picture that is so surreal, to the point of unbelievable, that it could easily be attributed to AI being at play.”

In a way, Astray’s attempt to dupe the judges could be viewed as a form of performance art. In his Fortune article, Astray said AI-generated images have been in the news because they’d won photo contests they “were not supposed to compete in”, which he feels shows have fast AI has proliferated in recent years.

But Astray chose to come clean after the winners were announced and informed the Creative Resource Collective, the organization behind the awards.

In an Instagram post caption last week, he wrote: “I entered this actual photo into the AI category of the 1839 Awards to prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance, that Mother Nature and her human interpreters can still beat the machine, and that creativity and emotion are more than just a string of digits.”

Astray added he was surprised by the reaction from Lily Fierman, cofounder and director of the awards, whom he says “remarked that she appreciates the powerful message and that it was an important and timely statement.”

The AI category was won by Robyn Findlayson.

The Creative Resource Collective didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.