Pics or it didn’t happen: digiDirect holds AI vs. photographer competition after fake image sweeps contest

Camera and audio-visual equipment retailer digiDirect will today reveal the results of its first-ever competition between photographers and AI image generators, weeks after an artificially generated image earned a shock victory in the company’s weekly image contest.

In January, an artificial image generated by Australian firm Absolutely.AI won digiDirect’s weekly photography competition, becoming one of many images worldwide to infiltrate recent photography competitions.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Absolutely Ai (@absolutely.ai)

After copping to the oversight, digiDirect altered its rules, ensuring photographers provide raw data proving the image came from a camera.

But it also issued a new challenge, asking AI image generators to pit ‘their’ work against that of real photographers.

The entries were judged by five photographers, backed by camera brands Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fujifilm, and Lumix.

The results are set for release today, with the winner garnering a $1,000 digiDirect gift card and significant bragging rights.

The latest competition is more nuanced than a simple battle between human creativity and technological prowess, digiDirect general manager Haig Kayserian says.

Photography itself was once seen as a technological challenger to traditional forms of expression through drawing and painting, but visual art assumed new forms as cameras became the dominant form of accurately capturing a scene.

In the same way, Kayserian says photography will continue to progress, even as artificial intelligence becomes a more competent compositor of visual data.

“Human artistry evolved, and when forms of human artistry evolve, and they don’t stay stagnant, they will survive,” Kayserian told SmartCompany.

“That’s what history has shown us with paintings and art generally, but it’s also shown us with photography.”

The digiDirect business has already adapted to changing forms of imaging technology, he added.

Where the business once focused on still imagery, digiDirect now offers equipment targeted towards online streamers and vloggers, a category of consumer unheard of when the company first launched.

Given the company’s existing responsiveness to the needs of image-makers, Kayserian said the new competition could lead to deeper discussions about the role of AI in the sector.

But whether AI imagery constitutes art itself is another question entirely.

“The development of generative technologies, which are helping create some of these images, they do have an element of human artistry associated,” Kayserian mused.

“Technologists are also artists of their generation.

“But those that are basically using those technologies, and putting through some instructions for an image to auto-create and auto-generate, is that really human artistry?

“I don’t believe it is. So it’s going to be interesting to see whether the challenge sees the same.”