Jason M. Allen was almost too nervous to enter his first art competition. Now, his award-winning image is stirring debates about whether art can be generated by a computer, and what, exactly, it means to be an artist.
In August 2022, Allen, a 39-year-old game designer who lives in Pueblo West, Colorado, won first place in the “digital arts/digitally-operated photography” category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. His winning image, titled Théatre D’opéra Spatial, was made with Midjourney—an artificial intelligence system that can produce detailed images when fed written prompts (提示).
Allen’s winning image looks like a bright cross between a classic and modern painting. It’s one of three such images he entered in the competition. Allen posted excitedly about his win on Midjourney’s Discord server on August 25, along with pictures of his three entries; it spread quickly on Twitter days later, with many artists feeling angry about Allen’s win because of his use of AI to create the image. “He just ‘pressed a few buttons to make a digital art piece’,” one Twitter user wrote. “We’re watching the death of art unfold before our eyes.”
However, to get the final three images he entered in the competition, Allen said, he took over 80 hours. First, he played around with phrasing that led Midjourney to generate images of women in nice dresses and space helmets. Over time, with slight adjustments to his written prompts, he created 900 repeating processes of what led to his final three images. He gave the final touch to those three images in Photoshop. Then he ran the images through another software program called Gigapixel AI that can improve resolution (分辨率) and had the images printed at a local print shop.
Allen is glad that the debate over whether AI can be used to make art is getting so much attention. “Rather than hating the technology or the people behind it, we need to recognize it’s a powerful tool and use it for good so we can all move forward,” Allen said.
【小题1】What do we know about Theatre D’opera Spatial?| A．Its beauty is widely accepted. | B．Its creation is an easy process. |
| C．It shows the death of traditional art. | D．It has caused a lot of arguments. |
| A．He searched for smart written prompts. | B．He edited his final images in Photoshop. |
| C．He fed Midjourney with famous paintings. | D．He developed the software named Gigapixel. |
| A．Worried. | B．Uncaring. | C．Positive. | D．Annoyed. |
| A．AI Beats Out Human Artists in the Art Field |
| B． AI Won an Art Contest and Artists Are Angry |
| C．An Artist Wins State Fair Art Contest and Laughs |
| D．The Artist From Pueblo West Is Defending His Work. |
