Can AI-generated art really win fine art competitions against human artists?
An AI artwork won first place at a state fair art competition - and the art world has been in an existential crisis ever since.
The answer
In September 2022, Jason Allen submitted 'Théâtre D'opéra Spatial,' an image generated using Midjourney AI, to the Colorado State Fair's annual art competition in the 'digitally manipulated photography' category - and won first place. Allen had spent approximately 80 hours refining prompts and post-processing the image using Photoshop. The victory ignited a global firestorm: artists accused him of cheating, with one declaring 'art is dead.' Allen argued he was transparent about his methods and that creative direction counts as artistry. The US Copyright Office subsequently ruled in 2023 that purely AI-generated images cannot receive copyright protection, though works involving significant human creative contribution may qualify. The incident crystallized fundamental questions about creativity, authorship, and the value of human artistic labor in an age when anyone can generate visually stunning images with a text prompt. By 2025, major art institutions had largely prohibited AI-generated entries from competitions.
Source: The New York Times
- ai-art
- midjourney
- creativity
- copyright
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