German photographer declines 'Sony' award after AI-generated image wins, urges debate

In Eldagsen’s opinion: “they are not.”

From a small city in the South-West of Germany, Eldagsen studied photography and then conceptual art and intermedia before adding philosophy to his bow.

Berlin-based since 1997, Eldagsen entered his work “PSEUDOMNESIA / The Electrician’ to the Sony World Photography Award, after deciding to see what would happen as the SWPA stated that any device could be used.

In March 2023 Eldagsen was told he had won the award for the Open Competition / Creative category.

Following the announcement Eldagsen contacted the Awards event organisers CREO and told them his image had been created using A.I. and became aware of press enquiries to the organisers about the nature of the image.

Eldagsen says that a period of radio silence from CREO led him to commit his act of ‘disruption’ when he took to the awards stage and refused the award.

“How many of you knew or suspected that it was A.I. generated? Something about this doesn’t feel right, does it? A.I. images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. A.I. is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award,” Eldagsen says on his website of the awards ceremony speech.

Speaking to Reuters via Zoom, Eldagsen said he felt obliged to do something public after what he felt was a refusal of the SWPA to join a debate about the future of A.I. in art and journalism.

"I wanted to see if competitions are prepared for A.I. images to be handed in and they are not. They must be aware that there will be more and more A.I. generated images and photo competitions and it should not be mixed up. It's two different things. They look the same, but they shouldn't be in the same category," he told Reuters.

For Eldagsen, the awards missed an important beat, by neither acknowledging that an A.I. could win nor refusing it either. At the time SWPA had said Eldagson could keep the award.

“Yes, it is A.I. and we support it because it's a creative category and we look into the future. That would have been a perfect way to go and to create a positive outcome,” Eldagsen says of how he feels the conversation should have gone.

"It was promised that I get the questions soon. I was waiting for 20 days, but nothing. And that was leading to the point where I said, I need to do something disruptive, something they cannot be silent about like they have been in the past,” he said.

To better address the topic of A.I. in the future, Eldagsen would like to see a change in terminology from ‘Photography’ to ‘Promptography’, referring to Peruvian Photographer Christian Vinces who came up with the term after reading about the incident.

A prompt is a code, text or image used to create A.I. content. As much as Eldagsen enjoys using technology for his art he is also worried about the dangers for society and especially journalism.

Maintaining an infrastructure for fact-checking would be time-consuming and costly, but is essential, Eldagsen believes. ‘We need to invest in this because if we don't, democracy is going to fail. We will be manipulated by whoever wants to.”

Reuters has asked SWPA for comment.

Reuters