AI “art” in photography communities

What happens when AI art starts appearing in online photography communities? It seems the answer to this depends on the community in question.

Left: AI artwork of a beach sunrise based on the photo on the right taken by author

I’ve been experimenting a lot lately with the AI art and what it can do, but to me it’s always been just a tech experiment. I’ve seen some of the news articles about the issues with it and while I don’t want to debate those particular problems here. I will say that the complaint from artists around the AI being trained on images from those artists (or any artist) without their permission is a valid complaint in my opinion. Especially when you consider the ability (and wide use) of them in replicating an artists style.

What happens though when photography communities start getting AI art uploaded by people as “photographs”. Should this be allowed? Taking it a step further, many of these communities run competitions with actual prizes and challenges where you may just win bragging rights. What about these images being entered into the contents or challenges?

You might say… “It’s easy to see an AI generated image compared to a real photograph.”

I’d agree, for the most part it is easy to tell the difference, but not always and I’ve been blown away by how many of these AI generated “photos” have had likes and comments from people that genuinely seem to believe they are…