I've entered photography contests before, and the ones I entered requested the raw file from the camera as well as your final .jpg/.png as a way of proving it was you at that took the image.
The article goes on to state that the Sony competition refused to acknowledge the withdrawal.
The author traveled to the ceremony at his own expense, found that he was not allocated time to speak, then went onstage unannounced to explain his refusal, at which point all physical evidence of his work was removed from the facility, again without comment.
I agree that Sony could have saved itself trouble by requiring the raw camera footage with verifiable exif data.
Almost sounds like the collective decision making process of the awards organization were in denial that the industry at large is changing.
Feels dystopian that they would just, scrub the winning work from the website and physical location without comment, pretending as if it didn't happen.
I feel like the guy behaved pretty indecently, and to reward him with more attention would encourage others to behave similarly in the future, and detract from the other winners who participated in the contest in good faith.
I feel like he didn't behave indecently at all, and thus everything you said which follows, is not, in fact, the case
the fact that he was able to enter at all with a non-photo is proof that Sony is in the wrong, and despite their coverup, is not, in fact, prepared to deal with "black-hat artists" in this space
when an inadequacy makes itself apparent, the decent thing to do is acknowledge it, thank anyone who helped you see it, and try to make it right – Sony did none of these things, and thus are the "indecent" ones here
What is verifiable EXIF data? The submission was simulating a 100 year old photo. There could never be verifiable EXIF data for that. Sony didn't care; they liked the creativity.
Sony problem was in not catching someone who wanted to embarrass them. There's not a good way to detect that in advance.
In regards to research I'm struggling to imagine useful applications of being able to create such raw files. Also, as it's a general term for a file containing raw sensor data, it would be different across sensors.
In any case, perhaps some kind of hardware-signed cryptography scheme on the files from the camera could be used in lieu of this development in the future.
The most obvious application would be faking criminal exhibits. Fake photos prrofing something
RAW files generated "backwards" do already exist. For this, police and forensics have been using special cameras with hardware signatures for raw files for around 15 years, but Canon's and Nikon's system was broken by Elcomsoft like 12 years ago. Sony is trying something similar in their A7 IV, but I don't know how serious it is, and I think it's not as oriented to forensics as Canon and Nikon was.
I'll admit those are stretches. Anyway, in addition to a digital signing scheme, these competitions are gonna need more editing restrictions if they want to exclude the use of diffusion models.
What sort of editing did you have in mind? If you are using SD to add things to the photo for example, you would see the difference between the raw file and the .jpg you submitted?
- Changing the style of the whole photo to (for instance) make it look old and analog.
- "Enhancing" it with HDR, depth of field, focus everywhere or something like that.
- Altering exposure beyond what you could get out of a underexposed/overexposed RAW file.
- Stylizing the human subjects to make them look more attractive, more grimey or whatever
All these things could arguably be done in photoshop, but its just very labor intensive and more hit-or-miss. Hence the contest rules would have to exclude most photoshop work if they want to exclude diffusion.
It’s already the case to add textures and patterns. Like sharpening images of the moon and its craters with AI. It’s hard to draw the line. Some phone does these AI work live now!
The author traveled to the ceremony at his own expense, found that he was not allocated time to speak, then went onstage unannounced to explain his refusal, at which point all physical evidence of his work was removed from the facility, again without comment.
I agree that Sony could have saved itself trouble by requiring the raw camera footage with verifiable exif data.