An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed
September 3rd, 2022I played with Midjourney and watched the outputs generated from other users’ prompts. The results ranged from *meh* to breathtaking. It’s extremely weird and unsettling to consider how advanced this technology is already, and where it’s going to be in few years.
It’s also astonishing.
Via: Vice:
A man came in first at the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition using an AI generated artwork on Monday. “I won first place,” a user going by Sincarnate said in a Discord post above photos of the AI-generated canvases hanging at the fair.
Sincarnate’s name is Jason Allen, who is president of Colorado-based tabletop gaming company Incarnate Games. According to the state fair’s website, he won in the digital art category with a work called “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial.” The image, which Allen printed on canvas for submission, is gorgeous. It depicts a strange scene that looks like it could be from a space opera, and it looks like a masterfully done painting. Classical figures in a Baroque hall stare through a circular viewport into a sun-drenched and radiant landscape.
But Allen did not paint “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” AI software called Midjourney did. It used his prompts, but Allen did not wield a digital brush. This distinction has caused controversy on Twitter where working artists and enthusiasts accused Allen of hastening the death of creative jobs.
Related: Professional AI Whisperers Have Launched a Marketplace for DALL-E Prompts
