“I was flattered”
Susie Dougherty was very pleased with the photo she took of her son with her iPhone. She loved the crisp, color-rich photograph of him posing with mannequins at the Gucci show so much that she printed out a copy and entered a local photo contest.
Four judges studied the photo, and they liked it, but then it was removed from the competition. The judges suspect that the image was created by artificial intelligence. “I was flattered,” says Susie Dougherty, adding that her 18-year-old son Kaspar found it funny.
She asked her son if he was upset, to which he replied: “No, if they think it’s AI, then the picture turned out great. I don’t even know how to take a photo with artificial intelligence.”
Dougherty says he and his son visited an exhibition of props and sets at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, which were used in advertising campaigns for the luxury fashion house.
A picture from an iPhone was taken for AI work and was not allowed into the photo contest
Ian Anderson, owner of Sydney-based print shop Charing Cross Photo, says the competition may eventually have to accept AI-generated works in a separate category.
When this image came out, we all liked it, so I said, “Wait, it looks a bit like AI.” Then we all started talking about it and realized that we can’t know for sure. But based on our suspicions, we were unable to take a photo.
Anderson says he looked at the metadata but couldn’t tell if it was AI or not.
