Particular attention was directed towards the owl\u2019s talons, which appear to show too many digits \u2013 often a hallmark of generated AI imagery. And while the aurora has been explained away as a geomagnetic storm, a well-lit image of a wildlife subject in front of a well-exposed night sky would be extremely challenging to achieve in a single frame.<\/p>\n
This is an important point, because the Garden for Wildlife Photo Contest does not allow composite imagery. And indeed, to the competition’s credit, the image has since been disqualified due to it being deemed a composite and an incredible image of a Yellow garden spider by Nicole Land<\/a> has been announced as the deserved winner. As far as I can see, to date, the competition has offered no conclusion as to whether or not generative AI was involved in the offending image’s creation.<\/p>\n Now, I\u2019m generally very sympathetic to competition judges. Frankly, it\u2019s a thankless job and you can\u2019t please everyone. Heck, it\u2019s pretty hard to please yourself, because when you\u2019ve sifted through thousands of images and ended up with tens of potential winners, you rarely feel wholly satisfied with your choices.<\/p>\n And situations like this aren\u2019t entirely on the competition. Images are judged in good faith, that\u2019s why there tends to be a very carefully worded list of rules. But in this instance, I cannot understand why the offending image wasn\u2019t flagged, immediately. To me at least, it screams further investigation.<\/p>\n Wildlife competitions have always been difficult to judge. I captured this image at the Hawk Conservancy Trust Bird of Prey Centre, but to the untrained eye it could have been taken in the wild… | Credit: Future \/ Mike Harris<\/p>\n However, this entire situation has highlighted another ugly side of genAI imagery. And I don\u2019t believe it\u2019s being talked about enough. AI accusations. I don\u2019t know whether or not the image in question was partially or entirely AI generated or not. But it still breached competition rules and in doing so it still caused an AI uproar.<\/p>\n Every time something like this happens, people get a little bit more paranoid about AI, to the point that we now live in a world where photographs, videos and artworks are constantly assessed for even the slightest hallmark of genAI involvement.<\/p>\n Whether or not the content in question is genAI is kind of superfluous to my point. The rot has already set in. The world is more skeptical of photographs and videos than ever before. Heck, you can\u2019t even come across a funny video of a cat \u2013 mid doomscroll \u2013 without ditching the laughter for a second to really analyze the footage.<\/p>\n Hmm, is that AI? Or is that\u2026<\/p>\n Too late, the moment \u2013 the impact \u2013 it’s gone…<\/p>\n You might also like… <\/p>\n Interested in wildlife? Here are the best cameras for wildlife photography<\/a> and the best lenses for bird photography<\/a>. Plus, check out my 10 tips for wildlife photography<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. I\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[264183,751,178072,53364,70,16,15,1717,264182],"class_list":{"0":"post-946377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-accusations","9":"tag-generative-ai","10":"tag-national-wildlife-federation","11":"tag-photo-contest","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-wildlife","16":"tag-wildlife-subject"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116539763089221200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Eagle](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/e5e655f9154c23074cd2ef37b464825f.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n