Photography contests are often the best way to get some recognition for your work, and to compete with other professionals on an international level. While many image-makers continue to participate in hopes of winning, there have been instances in recent years when their hard work has been overshadowed due to AI images. In a new contest organized by Tokina, the giant in the lens market, has made photographers furious again over an image that was reportedly made by AI.
Per a new post on Reddit’s r/Camera, photographers revealed that Tokina‘s monthly contest-winning entry was generated by AI or was heavily manipulated by it. The image depicts a group of men fishing. But the photograph appears to have HDR-style lighting. The results since then have been taken down from Tokina Global’s page, and the company has not issued any clarification on the matter.
According to most Redditors, there are certain visual anomalies that the photographers have flagged. The seagulls appear mangled, the net does not interact with the water, and the usual clothing details are off. Furthermore, the image’s metadata, which was available on Tokina’s website per Redditors, also showcased a SynthID watermark. However, if you look at the website right now, the image no longer exists. SynthID is usually embedded in images generated by Google’s AI image-maker, Gemini. If you are using Lightroom or Photoshop, or any other editing software, the ID will not be applied.
Since the post, there are multiple comments damning the results, and urging Tokina to check the photographs before announcing the winners. Some say take a look at it, and you can be certain it is created by AI, so who is judging the contest? Photographers also questioned the company’s vetting process, asking if the company hadn’t seen the EXIF data before the winners were announced.
Then there is the discourse of how one has to go above and beyond to examine every aspect of the photograph. If a judge can be fooled, like happened during Sony’s photography award, then what can one say about a person who is not so well-versed with AI content?
Any photography awards contest with some credibility needs to have a specific set of steps to determine an image’s authenticity. For a worldwide competition of this scale, judges certainly can’t inspect each entry inch by inch at 100% magnification. Yet you’d think, being a contest of such repute, that the judging committee would have asked for the raw files from shortlisted photographers. This should be the minimum that should have been done before the winners were announced.
Feroz Khan, Gear Editor, The Phoblographer
In fact, since 2023, AI has become much more sophisticated, with generative AI being used by a series of editing platforms, including Photoshop, VSCO and more. If editing platforms add such options, there is no doubt that people would want to use them to get the best results. In fact, this is the time when photo contests, no matter how small, must put in guardrails and additional protocols to weed out photographs that are not real. If photographs like this win often, we are telling image-makers that their work is as good as dead.
Tokina’s contest is a reminder that every contest organizer must be held accountable, no matter if it is an annual or a monthly contest. These images are seen by millions, who will then just be happy with mediocre work.