At the Colorado State Fair, Jason Allen's AI-generated piece "Théâtre
D'opéra Spatial" won first prize in the digital category.
Using an AI-generated piece of art, a man won the fine art competition at
the Colorado State Fair on Monday. In a Discord post, a person going by the
name Sincarnate said, "I got first place," atop images of the AI-generated
canvases displayed at the event.
Jason Allen, the president of the Colorado-based tabletop game firm
Incarnate Games,
is known as Sincarnate. He won in the digital art category, according to the
state fair's website, with a piece titled "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial." The picture, which Allen
submitted printed on canvas, is stunning. It appears to be a fine artwork
and portrays an odd setting that may have come from a space opera. Through a
spherical viewport, classical characters in a Baroque hall gaze onto a
luminous and sun-drenched scene.
But an artificial intelligence program named Midjourney painted "Théâtre
D'opéra Spatial," not Allen. It followed his instructions, but Allen didn't
use a digital paintbrush. On Twitter, professional artists and art fans
argued that Allen was speeding up the demise of creative professions by
making this difference.
Artist Genel Jumalon
tweeted
about Allen's victory, "TL;DR – Someone entered an art competition with an
AI-generated painting and got the first prize." "That's really fucking
terrible," I agree.
A Twitter user going by the handle OmniMorpho
responded with a statement
that received over 2,000 likes: "We're seeing the death of artistry happen
before our eyes." Even highly skilled employment run the risk of becoming
obsolete if creative jobs aren't protected against automation. Then, what
will we have?
In the Midjourney Discord server on Tuesday, Allen remarked, "I knew this
would be contentious. "How ironic that all these individuals on Twitter who
are against artificial intelligence-generated art are the first to criticize
the human aspect and throw the human under the bus! Do you guys think this
is hypocritical?
Allen responded when Motherboard contacted him, saying that he would be
driving for 12 hours and would not be able to reply right away.
Allen claims that the award-winning artwork would not have been what it is
now without his contribution. Prior to the winners being revealed, he wrote
in a post, "I have been exploring a special prompt that I will be publishing
at a later time, I have created 100s of images using it, and after many
weeks of fine tuning and curating my gens, I chose my top 3 and had them
printed on canvas after unshackling with Gigapixel AI.
Allen said that his detractors were evaluating his work based on the
process used to make it and that someday, the art world will classify
AI-produced artwork under its own category. What if we took it to the
opposite extreme? he said. "What if an artist established a tremendously
tough and convoluted sequence of restrictions in order to make a work, say,
they made their art while hanging upside-down and being lashed while
painting." Should the work of this artist be assessed differently from the
work of another artist who produced the identical artwork "normally"? I know
what will happen to this in the end; I assume they will just establish a
category for "artificial intelligence art" for items like this.
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated art worries
artists. After
publishing an email with a Midjourney-generated image of Alex Jones, Atlantic writer Charlie
Warzel became well-known. Many individuals were offended by a big newspaper
adopting AI instead of a human artist.
In a subsequent essay, cartoonist Matt Borrs told Warzel that "technology is rapidly being used
to create gig employment and to enrich billionaires, and so much of it
doesn't appear to help the public well enough." A part of that is AI art. It
seems as though you've eliminated the necessity to hire the illustrator,
which is incredibly disappointing to illustrators but cool to developers and
technically oriented individuals.
Jason Allen through Midjourney was explicitly stated on Allen's entry to
the state fair, and Allen once more emphasized the need for human labor in
the creation of the piece. "I do passes in Photoshop, upscale with
Gigapixel, then produce pictures with MJ."
Despite the controversy, the victory has only boosted his confidence. He
said, "I'm not stopping now. "This victory has only energized my
endeavor."
