AI wins art contest, and artists are outraged.

In August, Allen, a game designer based in Pueblo West, Colorado, won first place in the emerging artist division of the “Digital Arts/Digitally-Composed Photography” category at the Colorado State Fair Art Competition. Their winning image, titled “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” (French for “Space Opera Theatre”), was created with Midjourney – an artificial intelligence system that can create detailed images when fed text queries. A $300 prize went with the win.

Allen’s winning image looks like a bright and realistic cross between Renaissance and steampunk painting. It is one of three images he entered in the contest. A total of 11 people entered 18 works of art in the same category in the Emerging Artist category.

Allen’s contested definition of the category states that digital art refers to works that use “digital technology as part of the creative or presentational process.” Allen says Midjourney was used to create the image when he entered the competition.

The novelty of these tools, how they are used to create images and, in some cases, guarding some of the most powerful gateways, has led to debates about whether they can make art or help people by making art.

“This is the same reason why we don’t allow robots to compete in the Olympics,” one Twitter user wrote.

Another tweet is the literal definition of “pressing a few buttons to make this digital art.” “AI artwork is now a banana plastered on the wall of the digital world.”

However, Allen said that while he didn’t use a paintbrush to create his winning piece, he had plenty of work to do.

“It’s not like you’re just smashing words together and winning a competition,” he said.

First, he played with a phrase that allowed Midjourney to generate images of women in frilly dresses and space hats – he was trying to subvert Victorian-style clothing with space themes, he said. Over time, he made 900 iterations that led to the final three images, making many small improvements to the text prompt (such as adjusting lighting and color harmony). He cleaned up those three images in Photoshop, for example by shaking up one of the female figures in the winning image and giving it a head with black hair. Midjourney made her headless. He then ran the images through another software program that could enhance the resolution and had the images printed on canvas at a local print shop.

Allen is pleased that the debate over whether AI can be used to create art is attracting a lot of attention.

“Instead of hating technology or the people behind it, we should recognize that it’s a powerful tool and use it for good,” Allen said.

One of the competition’s judges, artist and art teacher Cal Duran, said he didn’t realize Allen’s piece had been created by AI when he judged it about Midjourney. Still, he stood by his decision to award it first in the category, calling it a “beautiful piece.”

“I think there is a lot involved in this class and I think AI technology can give more opportunities to people who are not artists themselves in the usual way,” he said.

Allen won’t say yet what the textual prompt was behind the winning image — he plans to keep it a secret until he publishes a larger related work, which he expects to complete later this year.