Maryland State Fair Bans AI-Edited Photos After Guy Alston's 'Neon Lights' Win Sparks Outrage

Key facts

• Guy Alston won first place in the 'Neon Lights' category at the Maryland State Fair's Open Class Home Arts photography competition.
• The winning image was heavily edited using AI, specifically the Google-based AI software Nano Banana in Photoshop.
• A Reddit post in the r/maryland community about the win received over 3,400 upvotes and hundreds of comments.
• The Maryland State Fair's photography competition will prohibit AI modifications in future entries and disqualify AI-edited photos next year.
• Sam Chamelin, superintendent of the competition, said the 'Neon Lights' category allowed embellished photographs this year and did not ban AI-edited entries.
• 850 photographs were submitted to this year's competition.
• Alston, based in Randallstown, said he used AI to modify an original photograph he had taken years earlier and did not think he was breaking the rules.
• The fair's photo contest has 40 standard categories and two special categories that change annually; special categories have allowed more digital embellishment for at least 10 years.
• A similar controversy occurred when a man won a fine art competition at a Colorado state fair with an AI text-to-image generated image.