WTF?! Remember the stories about people entering AI-generated images into photo competitions and winning? In an ironic twist, the opposite has now happened: someone entered a real photograph into a competition for artificially generated pictures and won, leading to the photographer being disqualified.

Miles Astray's image, titled F L A M I N G O N E, was entered into the AI category of the People's Vote Award at the 1839 Photography Awards. Art News writes that judges for the competition included representatives from the New York Times, the auction house Christie's, and publishing house Phaidon.

Astray was surprised when the judges awarded his entry the third-place prize in the competition – it was also voted the best image by the public in the People's Choice category – as it hadn't been created using AI. This was a real photograph of a flamingo, even though it does appear to be missing its head; the bird is scratching its belly.

Astray writes that he entered the image to prove that "human-made content has not lost its relevance, that Mother Nature and her human interpreters can still beat the machine, and that creativity and emotion are more than just a string of digits."

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The photographer adds that he noticed the cases of AI images winning photo competitions. It happened last year when Berlin-based "photomedia artist" Boris Eldagsen participated in the World Photography Organization's Sony World Photography Awards, which offers prizes that include $5,000 cash and Sony camera equipment. His image (below) won the Creative category, though he refused the prize as it was AI-generated. There was also the case of a Midjourney creation winning an art competition in 2022.

Astray says his shot was the perfect candidate to reverse this trend as it is surreal and easy to imagine that it's not real, even though it's totally natural – he clicked the shutter at the exact moment the flamingo's head was hidden while it was scratching its belly. He says this attack on AI and its ethical implications outweigh the ethical implications of deceiving the judges and the public. Astray added that he considers this a win for "Mother Nature herself."

"I'm glad to see that this experiment confirmed my hypothesis: there is nothing more fantastic and creative than Mother Nature herself," Astray wrote.

While the image has now been disqualified from the competition, ‌Lily Fierman, the director of Creative Resource Collective, says there were no hard feelings, and that the flamingo would be the starting point for a discussion on the use of AI.

PetaPixel writes that while this is the first instance of a real photo winning an AI competition, a genuine picture was disqualified from a photography contest last year after the judges wrongly suspected that it was created by an AI.