An AI-generated painting took first place at the Colorado State Fair. Artists are pissed

TL;DR — Someone entered an art competition with an AI-generated piece and won the first prize.

Yeah that's pretty fucking shitty. pic.twitter.com/vjn1IdJcsL

TL;DR — Someone entered an art competition with an AI-generated piece and won the first prize.

Yeah that's pretty fucking shitty. pic.twitter.com/vjn1IdJcsL

— 🇵🇸 Genel Jumalon ✈️ AMKE + ECCC (@GenelJumalon) August 30, 2022

“Someone entered an art competition with an AI-generated piece and won the first prize. Yeah that's pretty fucking shitty," writes artist Genel Jumalon.

“We’re watching the death of artistry unfold before our eyes. If creative jobs aren’t safe from machines, then even high-skilled jobs are in danger of becoming obsolete. What will we have then?" another artist answers him.

In his defense, Jason Allen, who is president of a gaming company that develops tabletop games, said: “I knew this would be controversial. I have been exploring a special prompt that I will be publishing at a later date, 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.”

In fact, there is a point in Jason Allen's words. Some works of art have caused controversy before, including regarding the artist's contribution to the work.

The most famous example is the ready-made Fountain presented by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, which was a simple serial urinal that was exhibited in a gallery. The original work is lost, but Fountain has the status of an important milestone of art of the 20th century and is recognized as one of the most influential works of its time.

Or take Damien Hirst, one of the most famous contemporary artists. He does not create his works with his own hands. The artist only gives instructions to the workers, in the case of large installations, or to apprentice artists who paint for him. Sometimes the instructions can be received by phone or the Internet from another corner of the world. How is this really different from AI generation?

Returning to Jason Allen's Théâtre D'opéra Spatial. Artificial intelligence Midjourney was used to generate the pictures, which really impresses with the quality of the work. The image was enlarged using another AI - Gigapixel AI.

It seems that the case in Colorado is only the first fruit. For example, simple backgrounds for some games are already generated by AI. Welcome to cyberpunk!