A piece of digital artwork that won first place in a fine art competition sparked a social media debate about the nature of art and what it means to be an artist.
On Monday, Jason Allen won first place in the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition with an AI-generated artwork. The synthetic media designer announced his victory on the Discord server, according to a Twitter post. “I won first place,” he wrote while sharing pictures of the AI-generated canvases hanging at the fair.
Mr Allen won in the digital art category, according to the state fair’s website. He printed the image on canvas for submission, which depicted classical figures standing in a Baroque hall. He created his piece with the help of Mid journey, an AI art tool that uses a text-to-image generator.
Mr. Allen’s distinction has sparked a Twitter debate because he did not paint his award-winning artwork. Some believe that human artistry is doomed due to AI and that all artists will be replaced by machines. Others believe that art will evolve and adapt to new technologies as they emerge.
“We’re witnessing the death of artistry right in front of our eyes,” one user wrote. “If creative jobs aren’t safe from machines, even high-skilled jobs may become obsolete.” “What will we have then?” another asked.
“This stinks for the same reason we don’t allow robots to compete in the Olympics,” said a third, while a fourth said, “I don’t see a problem with this.” I’m not sure how this differs from photography. The person spent weeks fine-tuning the input before sifting through hundreds of options to find the “best” ones. That necessitates subjective artistic experience. It’s not like the AI did it all by itself.”
Meanwhile, Mr Allen told KOAA News that he wrote the piece after approximately 900 attempts. He admitted to writing out the scene for AI to interpret and editing the image. He believes that his distinction raises the possibility of including an AI category in future art shows.
