SM in photography: “It is not acceptable to compete with objects created by artificial intelligence”

Perhaps no one has missed the entry of AI tools into the world of photography. For Photoshop, automation took off in earnest when Adobe released its “Sensei” machine learning system, which can then help a user fill in blanks with a “smart repair brush” or “replace sky” that can both generate acceptable results quickly and easily.

But with the new generation of machine learning, which we call “generative AI,” new objects can also be created—a development that has gone at a rapid pace and, among other things, is taking parts of the photography world to bed. Recently, we saw, for example, the issue at the Sony World Photography Awards photography competition, where an image created entirely with artificial intelligence won first prize in the Creative category.

AI tips in pictures

The SM Photography Competition, organized annually by the Swedish Association of Portrait Photographers, after last year’s competition, had a discussion about how they would view artificial intelligence in their competition and what would be applied in their competition in the future.

When Kamera & Bild spoke to Therese Asplund at SM i Fotografi to find out how they feel about the use of AI in images that are used to compete in their photo contest, she told them they had now adapted the rules.

– The discussion about artificial intelligence wasn’t really that big last year, but after Christmas and the beginning of the year, we’re starting to see how more and more photographers are also starting to create images entirely digitally without any photographic elements. Whether they could be submitted as a contest entry was never discussed, says Therese Asplund, as they were not created with photography, but we needed to adapt the rules for when and how AI could be used to create contest images.

Therese also explains that Sweden has entered into discussions with the FEP (Federation of European Photographers), which since last year has an entire category where images created entirely by artificial intelligence are allowed to compete.

– It’s absolutely crazy that the winner of this category can win the title of ‘Photographer of the Year’ without even touching the camera! The tricky thing for anyone running photo contests is deciding where to draw the line. Photoshop’s smart correction brush is also a kind of AI, but there’s a big difference between removing raised hairs on a photograph and creating the entire image in Text to Image. That’s why we’ve made an addition about AI in our contest specifically for the competition context when you’re competing with your photography skills. For example, it is not acceptable to create new objects with artificial intelligence, such as an artificial intelligence sky. However, some tools that use AI can be used, such as the “smart healing brush”, or for example a photo you took late at night with a high ISO and uses AI functions to remove noise – then the base image remains both photographically created and yours. You’re the one who made all the decisions about what it should contain and what it should look like, Terese explains.

Artificial intelligence creates the content

The simplicity of the image AI functionality is also that you don’t have to write yourself in detail how the image is generated, but the AI ​​itself fills in the blanks. This way, there will always be an image without having to describe the content the way you want the result to be.

– The problem is that you can create images with AI without specifying any content, which is what I wanted to show with the image examples above, Terese says about the four images she created in Midjourney to illustrate the problem – using only text as the ‘award winning image’.

In the image samples, Midjourney took impressions of images that fit the name to create the images, while the text prompt didn’t really describe what the images should look like or what elements they should contain. The question, then, is who actually created the image.

do not want to limit

Therese also says that they also don’t want to create too many restrictive rules:

– The idea is that you should have as much creative freedom as possible as a photographer, because what we don’t want is to restrict it. But at the same time, it must fulfill the purpose of making photographers improve in the profession itself, and it must be fair to those who compete. What we think about when we set all the rules is to have as few restrictions as possible.

At the same time, Therese also believes that it is difficult to find out everything that is done in pictures.

– We can never guarantee that checks will find all images that break the rules, but by setting the rules as they are now, you have to lie – at the risk of being caught – to cheat. But the fact that we have a check where we go through all the photos and that all photographers who go to the final have to submit their original files – means you might not be cheating.

This is how the SM i Fotografi base addon reads in relation to artificial intelligence:

Artificial intelligence, digital manipulation, and photomontages

Digital processing and photomontages are permitted in all categories, with the exception of Documentary and Documentary Wedding. If the majority of the image was created by a montage of several images, it should be submitted in the Digital Illustration category.

In the case of photomontages, all elements of the image must be created by the photographer himself.

AI-assisted images or image elements are not permitted in any category at SM in Photography.

Read all the rules And participate in this year’s competition before June 30, 2023 in smfotografi.se.