Within the black-and-white picture, two girls tightly cradle one another–and an octopus. People do not hug cephalopods day-after-day, so how did photographer Annika Nordenskiöld handle to seize the extremely uncommon sight? You guessed it. With the assistance of AI.

The lifelike image, titled “Twin Sisters in Love,” on Saturday gained the inaugural Prompted Peculiar International AI Prize on the Ballarat Worldwide Foto Biennale, an Australian pictures competition operating via October 22. The competitors is believed to be one of many first, if not the primary, AI-art award.

For the profitable picture, Nordenskiöld, who lives and works in Sweden, partnered with Midjourney, an AI device that shortly turns textual content phrases, or “prompts,” into hyper practical photographs by scanning a large database educated on visible artwork by people. Synthetic intelligence tools like Midjourney, Dall-E and Stable Diffusion proceed to seize imaginations, as they let anybody generate photographs from textual content in mesmerizing and typically creepy and wildly absurd methods.

“Not one of the locations, individuals or creatures in my prompts exist within the bodily realm,” Nordenskiöld mentioned of her profitable creation in an announcement. “They had been conjured from the sum of human expertise in our deep collective nicely, as seen from my dreamboat with its flickering mild.”

Artwork made with the assistance of AI has gained awards earlier than, amping up the already passionate debate over whether machines can generate real art, and what constitutes artwork within the first place. In 2022, for instance, an AI-generated photo won an art prize on the Colorado State Honest, prompting an intense backlash from artists who charged the winner with, primarily, dishonest. “We’re watching the dying of artistry unfold proper earlier than our eyes,” one critic wrote on Twitter, now generally known as X.

In contrast to the state truthful competitors, Ballarat Worldwide Foto Biennale explicitly solicited AI-generated work for its first Prompted Peculiar contest, receiving greater than 100 submissions from world wide, together with Germany, Israel and throughout Australia. The jury shortlisted 20 of these works, together with “A Pal in Want” by visible artist Morganna Magee. The picture reveals a kangaroo with a human-like arm standing upright and embracing an alien-looking creature in a wet, muddy subject.

AI art-generation instruments have creatives like Magee and Nordenskiöld intrigued and excited, however it’s additionally raised moral and copyright considerations. As machine-made artwork improves, graphic designers, illustrators, writers, composers and photographers additionally fear they might discover themselves edged out of labor.

“I perceive the concern of AI and discover it considerably wholesome,” Nordenskiöld mentioned when accepting her $2,000 first prize on Sunday from Sweden, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “However I see it extra like a colleague I’m working with.”

Fellow winners embrace Australian artist Hanna Silver, whose sepia-toned “Robotic Intermarriage, Melbourne 1895, 2023,” reveals a natty 19th century gentleman holding arms with a robotic throughout an city streetcar monitor. Greater than 1,000 competition guests chosen the old-timey image because the Prompted Peculiar viewers selection winner.

“General,” the three judges mentioned in a joint assertion, “the entries displayed a playful enthusiasm for AI-generated image-making, with a heavy emphasis on the photographic.”