There is a fine line between reality and fiction, and when it is blurred, chaos ensues. Something similar happened to the British photographer Miles Astray when his eerie yet alluring photograph of a headless flamingo won the 1839 Awards in the artificial intelligence category through jury and public vote. The catch? The image was an actual photograph!
The lead image is courtesy of Miles Astray. Provided with permission to the Phoblographer.
Yes, AI and its use in the art world have been the subject of much debate, with many questioning a machine’s role in creative endeavors. Can machines—also created by humans—outsmart the wits of the very beings that made them? Most juries on the subject think not, and Astray’s photograph forms a critical base for this complex discourse.
While the Awards disqualified the image following Astray’s revelation, the platform’s co-founder and director, Lily Fierman, was impressed by Astray. In a remark to Astray, Fierman said that his image is “an important, relevant and timely statement.” However, since other participants’ images followed the award’s guidelines, they let him go. (Robyn Finlayson’s creation holds the honors).
So, how does Astray’s work challenge our industry? For starters, he proves that we can never replicate nature’s delicate peculiarities. “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,” he wrote on his website.
But there is more. The image—Flamingone captured in Aruba—also counterpoints a hiccup at the Sony World Photography Awards last year. For the unversed, Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen entered his AI-generated image into the competition, only to win in the creative photo category. As a result, the photo community was deeply concerned, with many wondering how to distinguish an actual photograph from something created by a machine.
While the debate digressed after a point, Astray’s photograph is now here to revive our concerns. The incident further reminds us of the speed at which AI can be utilised to foster fallacy, with us having little to no control to stop it under the damage done. “We, as a society, are nowhere near prepared to question every image, audio file, or video we come across because historically we didn’t have to,” he told Fortune in an interview. “And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe it would be sad to question everything and everyone that is not right in front of our eyes. But our critical thinking will have to race AI’s lightspeed development if we want to stay ahead of it, and that’s an individual responsibility we all share.”
Further, Astray even reveals that what he did is nowhere different from what Eldagsen did. Following the mayhem once the news broke, the artist stated how AI concerns him as a citizen. “The press needs to come up with a system to make it clear what is authentic, manipulated, or generated,” he told Scientific American in an interview. If you don’t do that, democracy will be manipulated and misinformed by anyone who can write five words.”
In both incidents, one thing remains crystal clear: fact-checking is the most significant component of our artificial intelligence tribulation. For instance, someone must verify an image through the metadata and caption and have the means to depict that the photographer was present at the scene. For instance, at The Phoblographer, we ask artists to submit a behind-the-scene photograph that clearly portrays the artist at work. While it is arduous and impossible in situations such as undercover investigations or war photography, we must find ways to inculcate such practices to protect democracy in our hasty (and sometimes clickbait-y) digital era. Perhaps, with contributions from individuals such as Astray and Eldagsen (who make us think about our new photography world), we may finally find ourselves in the right direction.
