You can’t trust your eyes: A real photo just won an AI contest

Last year, I predicted that artificial intelligence would end reality as we know it in the span of a decade. I was very wrong about the timing. While it took about 47,000 years and Marcel Duchamp’s upside-down urinal to kill art, it took AI only two years to kill reality itself.



A “headless” flamingo, captured by photographer Miles Astray , represents the proverbial last nail in the coffin. It’s clear that nobody can tell real from fake or fake from real anymore.



Flamingone —as the photo is titled—was disqualified from the 1839 Color Photography Awards after winning the AI-generated image category. The reason: It’s a real photo. Astray told PetaPixel he entered the photo in the awards’ AI category to make the point that there is nothing “more fantastic and creative” than Mother Nature herself. “I’m glad to see that this experiment confirmed my hypothesis,” he says. 



[Screenshot: MilesAstray.com ]



The jurors—photo professionals and experts from The New York Times , Getty Images, and elsewhere—agreed with Astray’s “powerful message,” though ultimately they took away his prize. His real image fooled the public too (Astray also won the People’s Vote Award). Astray made his point and then some. Mother Nature is the bomb. Great. Let’s all go hug a tree. 



View this post on Instagram A post shared by Miles Astray (@milesastray)



But consider this: Astray’s stunt inadvertently proved that despite nature’s beauty, we are living in really weird times. We officially live in an absurd world with no tangible visual references to hold on to—no way of believing our own eyes.



A short time in the making



Reality’s house of cards began falling down in August 2022, when game designer Jason Allen won the Colorado State Fair’s digital arts competition with his work Théâtre D’opéra Spatial , a grandiose neoclassical painting generated entirely with Midjourney . When Allen announced his win online, the world was shocked— shocked, I tell you! —and droves of artists came out armed with pitchforks, tar, and feathers.



View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jason M. Allen (@jason_m_allen)



Less than a year later, in April 2023, Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen won the Creative category at the Sony World Photography Awards with an image titled The Electrician , earning him $5,000 and a bunch of Sony gear. At the time, Eldagsen renounced the prize and said he entered the contest to “provoke debate.”



View this post on Instagram A post shared by ProfiFoto (@profifoto.de)



Just a few months after that, the tables of reality turned once more. This time, a photo got booted out of a competition held by a store in Sydney when jurors suspected that it was AI-generated. The photographer, Suzi Dougherty, had used an iPhone to take an image of her son with two mannequins at an immersive Gucci exhibition. As she told The Guardian , “I wouldn’t even know how to do an AI photo. I’m just getting my head around ChatGPT.”



View this post on Instagram A post shared by Charing Cross Photo (@charingcrossphoto)



That brings us back to Flamingone , a real photo expelled from an AI photo contest. It completes the circle of this absurd journey into AI oblivion.



The bigger issue



Artificial intelligence has fully blurred the lines between photo and software (and in the process, it has killed our ability to feel awe ). So what’s left? Our auditory reality is next in line, thanks to headphones that change the way we hear the world . And video is already under attack. In June, two new AI video engines launched that make last February’s cool viral Sora demos look as ancient as VHS tapes.



If you thought we had time to prepare for all of this, you’re wrong. Maybe the best thing to do is bury our heads like the flamingo in Astray’s photo. If we can’t really tell whether or not what we’re seeing is real, perhaps it’s better not to see what’s coming.