Miles Astray's photograph "Flamingone," which shows a flamingo bending its neck and hiding its head under its torso, won the People's Vote Award and the Bronze Award in the AI category of this year's 1839 Color Photo Contest (named, according to the website, "after the year the medium first became widely available to the public") won the People's Vote Award and the Bronze Award in the AI category of the It was then disqualified for being a real photograph.

"I wanted to show that nature can still beat machines and that real work by real creators still has merit," the photographer told PetaPixel.

"After seeing recent examples of AI-generated images beating real photos in contests, I started thinking about reversing the story and its meaning by submitting real photos to AI contests.

Back in 2022, AI artist Jason Allen won first place in an art contest at the Colorado State Fair. Then the uproar started and we asked Allen for his thoughts. He said, "I think with any major advance in technology as it relates to art, there's always going to be a backlash. The same was true of the cameras that threatened portrait artists in the past. Of course, now we know that's ridiculous, but it takes time to accept the advances in the new age of art."

And in 2023, after Boris Erdagsen won the Creative Open category at the Sony World Photography Awards, his images were created by AI. 'AI images and photography should not be competing for these awards,' he said. 'AI is not photography; AI is not photography; AI is not photography; AI is not photography. So I will not accept the prize."

Erdagsen was trying to make the point that photography prizes are not ready for AI, and it seems he was right: the judges for the 1839 competition were the New York Times, Christie's, and Getty Images, Maddox Gallery directors and managers, but none of them could tell the difference between AI's work and a real photograph of a flamingo craning its neck.