Sony World Photography Award Winners Tell Us about Their Mixed Feelings about Artificial Intelligence. Opinions vary, but there is general consensus that we need transparency.
Landscape category winner Eddo Hartmann spent several years in a remote part of Kazakhstan known as the Polygon, once home to the Soviet Union’s largest nuclear testing centers, creating otherworldly landscapes.
The winners of the 2024 Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) have been announced, chosen from a staggering 380,000 entries. I was one of the lucky few to attend the public announcement press conference, exhibition and awards ceremony on April 18th.
The legendary Sebastian Salgado was on hand to receive the award for his outstanding contribution to photography (see his extensive and very moving catalog of black and white photographs), as well as 10 award winners in the categories of Creativity, Portrait and Still Life , as well as winners in the field of sustainable development, youth and students.
Some of the photographs stopped me in my tracks, pulled me in, revealing hidden details as I pondered the backstory, and made me want to know and see more, especially the series A Thousand Cuts by Sujata Setia from the UK and Father and Son by Valery. Poshtarov from Bulgaria. The creators telling me these stories personally and peeling back the layers made them even more special.
Adalie Schell took 2nd place in the Professional Portrait category for her series “First Car.”
During the exhibition, a topic that had been in my head for over a year came to the fore – images created by artificial intelligence in photo competitions. It was the headline that dominated last year’s awards: One of the category-winning images was created using artificial intelligence – the result of a few verbal clues and millions of random pixels from unknown sources, coming together faster than my kettle can boil.
Even now, twelve months later, AI is a topic that photo award organizers tend to avoid and its presence was not acknowledged during the awards.
Appreciating the excellent photographs on display, the time, expense and dedication of the photographers, and the courage of the people photographed in them, I was more eager than ever to discuss a topic that was in many ways contrary to what I had witnessed. Is there a place for AI-generated images in photo competitions? How should we respond to photo competitions?
I tracked down some of my favorite award-winning creatives, including Portrait winner Valery Poshtarov, Creative winner Sujata Setia, and Still Life winner Federico Scarchilli from Italy with his Flora series, to find out what they think.
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- View all competition winner galleries .
A Thousand Cuts , Sujata Setia. The image of her subject is superimposed in red and then physically cut up and re-photographed.
“I am an ardent traditionalist. For me, I haven’t tried creating with AI yet.”
According to Sujata Setia, A Thousand Cuts is “an ongoing series of portraits and narratives that provide a photographic exploration of patterns of domestic violence in the South Asian community. I borrow the metaphorical meaning of the word lingchi to demonstrate the cyclical nature of domestic violence.
“The continuous mockery of the soul of the abused is expressed by cutting up the portrait of the participant, and prints are made on thin paper to depict the fragility of existence. The final work is photographed in a narrow frame to create a feeling of suffocation and lack of room to move.”
I don’t think it should be classified in the same field as human-made photographic images.
Sujata Setia
We talked at length about her touching series, and I encourage you to discover A Thousand Cuts for yourself. Here’s what she said about AI:
“I am an ardent traditionalist. For me, I haven’t tried creating with AI yet. I find it fascinating, but it’s a completely different genre. It has nothing to do with photography and I don’t think it should be brought into the same field as human-made photographic images.
“SWPA could definitely have a category for AI-generated images, it’s a different category of course, but I don’t think it’s part of the portraits category or the creative category.”
“Technology evolves, and we as artists must follow the development of technology.”
“These secondary metabolites have also demonstrated important pharmacological activity in humans and constitute the active ingredients or major components on which the therapeutic effect of a drug depends; in fact, 40 percent of monomolecular drugs come from plant species. This series highlights the important role of pharmacognosy in modern biology.”
As artists, we must pursue a new way of creating art.
Federico Scarchilli
Federico has a different stance on AI-generated images than Sujita.
“Yes, I think AI-generated images are quite suitable. AI is a normal part of the process, technology is evolving and we as artists need to keep up with the technology as it evolves. However, whether on the Internet or when visiting exhibitions, the viewer needs to know that what they see is created by artificial intelligence.
“Photography is developing more and more every year, but we as artists must follow a new way of creating art. It’s not a problem. But the viewer should know this. The problem is that people don’t know it’s artificial intelligence. Reality can be manipulated. not knowing what you see – if it is used incorrectly it can be the worst, but how we use it is up to us.”
Father and son of Valery Poshtarov.
“These people are real people… present and connected.”
Every man I spoke to at the awards ceremony was touched by the symbolic action of holding hands in Valery Poshtarov’s Father and Son photographs—we are sons, many of us are fathers. Here’s what Valery says about his current project:
“In a world that is already falling apart, holding hands becomes a silent prayer – a way to come together again. Posing, fathers and sons hold hands for the first time in years, sometimes decades. This is a powerful moment, often filled with hesitation or even resistance. This act of intimacy became the main goal of the project, and the photographs became just evidence of the long-unspoken love between men.
Even if AI is capable of producing aesthetically pleasing images with an endless amount of creative ideas, it will still lack the presence of real life.
Valery Poshtarov
“Spanning cultures, reaching corners of Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia, Serbia and Greece, this project has become a beacon of emotional expression and cultural preservation. It serves as a global platform encouraging fathers and sons from around the world to join in. Leaving narratives behind, these portraits become open to interpretation, and I invite viewers to add their own layers of meaning, making us all contributors to this evolving human story.”
Valery passionately spoke to me about artificial intelligence in the context of his work.
“These people are real people, living, experiencing things they have never experienced before, being present and connected, unique in their own way and cannot be replicated. Even if AI is capable of producing aesthetically pleasing images with an endless amount of creative ideas, it will still lack the presence of real life. This makes me continue, with every new portrait, with every new father and son, I see a completely new story. Two more people are holding hands. Humanity is waiting to take part in this common action.”
Deafening silence
To me, the silence from photography competition organizers regarding artificial intelligence is deafening, and open conversations like the ones I have had with several professional and award-winning photographers need to be had. As creatives, we cannot afford to ignore AI image creation.
The people I spoke to had very different views on the use of AI and its potential place in photography competitions. But the common theme of our conversations was transparency. It’s better to allow AI by giving it a specific space within competitions (AI categories, if you will) than to exclude it completely, although the copyright issue cannot be ignored.
Will organizations like Creo and the World Photography Organization, which curate the Sony World Photography Awards, create an AI-generated category? I think there is an element of wishful thinking in these photography circles that AI image generation is a fad. It’s better to take a hit than to adapt. Aside from Creo founder and CEO Scott Gray’s vague statement in a February 2023 interview with TechRadar that “photography is at the cutting edge, constantly adapting and evolving,” we simply don’t know where it stands, and that’s more troubling given the need for transparency .
- The Sony World Photo Awards 2024 is open to the public from 19 to 25 April and takes place at Somerset House in London. Tickets can be booked on the SWPA website from £7.50.
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