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When Jason Allen submitted his “Th éâtre D’opéra Spatial” into the Colorado StateFair’s fine arts competition, the print was an immediate hit, defeating 20 other artists in the “digitally manipulated photography” category to win the first-place blue ribbon and a $ 300 prize.

Allen’s piece offers a clear example of how rapidly AI-generated art has advanced. Trained on billions of internet images, the systems have decisively pushed the boundaries of what computers can create.

But it has also sparked a massive debate over the meaning of art, with Allen facing accusations that he had been deceiving with something he asked a machine to create.

Text-to-image tools like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney have quickly increased in sophistication and have become one of the hottest topics in AI. They can generate not just fake people, objects and locations but mimic entire visual styles.

But AI-generated art has been criticized as automated plagiarism (剽窃), because it relies on millions of ingested art pieces that are then parroted (机械地重复) together. It has also fueled deeper fears: blurring the boundaries of reality or interfering with human art.

Allen said his art piece shows people need to “get past their denial and fear” of a technology that could give rise to new inventions and reshape our world. “The AI,” he said, “is a tool, just like the paintbrush is a tool. Without the person, there is no creative force.”

Jessica Hair, a 25-year-old receptionist at a doctor’s office who won third place in the competition, said she did not feel as if Allen had acted unfairly and had no hard feelings about his win.

Hair said her “Judge, Jury, Executioner”, which depicts a tuxedoed skeleton on a golden throne surrounded by skulls, took 15 hours to create with a stylus (触屏笔) on an iPad Pro. But Allen’s piece took time, effort and subjective judgment, too, and “how do we qualify what is and isn’t art?” she said.