Drew Harwell covers technology for the Washington Post, so he's not usually describing art in granular detail.

But in this case, I asked him to.

A piece called deatred d'opro-special.

That's French for space opera theater.

It's this gorgeous looking painting that is gold and red, and it looks almost like this giant baroque hall where there are these three women in these just flowing red and white robes.

And it's this giant kind of chamber and they're looking out to this big circular window that is so bright you can only really see like a glimmer of like mountains in the distance.

And it looks very sort of like sci-fi and mysterious but also kind of old world.

It's a really cool, cool image.

What's so important about it?

And what's even more important about it is that it was created by an AI.

It was created by this tool called mid-journey, which you type in a text prompt and it spits out an image.

This particular image was entered into the Colorado State Fair's fine art competition last month by a man named Jason Allen.

At the fair, Allen said the piece was made with mid-journey, but nobody really knew what that meant.

And you can guess where this is going.

He won.

He was one of 21 people to submit in this digitally manipulated photography category.

And the artist judges at the state fair said he was the best of the best.

So his AI created image be 20 other human artist created images.

And it opened up this big debate over, you know, are we comfortable with AI kind of beating us at our own game?

How did Jason Allen react when people were surprised and maybe not entirely thrilled that this piece of art was created by AI?

It was funny talking to him because you can tell he's really on the defensive.

Like he won this competition and was super excited about it.

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