Elon University’s School of Communication and School of Love and Business hosted an artificial intelligence poster contest, “Make Your Mark.” It was the first time an event of this kind had been held on campus, and it drew the attention and outrage of art and communication students. The total prize money was $650, and the competition was held in three parts: a training session on March 31st, a competition on April 2nd, and an awards ceremony on April 3rd. The anger continued all week. Has Elon become an AI psychopath?
The Instagram post announcing the event received just 19 likes and more than 100 comments, most of which were critical of the contest. Many of them follow similar voices.
“A countless student body filled with true artists, graphic designers, and filmmakers has chosen to invest their tuition dollars into this school. Do better, Elon,” wrote alumnus Drew Reuschlein, a film/television arts and music production major.
The consensus is clear. The people don’t want this. Multiple participants joined in to prove a point. I went into the heart of the poorly generated controversy to see how this deal was settled.
training session
I entered the Stairs Pavilion on March 31st at 5pm. By my estimate, there were about 13 people. For context, the first place winner will receive $200, second place $150, third place $100, and the judges’ favorite and fan favorite will also receive $100. In total, the prize pool was $650.
The first thing I saw was a letter displayed on the board from the organizer, Ben Hannam, dean of the School of Communication Design, referring to an obscure controversy at the venue.
“We understand that people may have concerns about incorporating AI into creative competitions,” Hannam wrote. “It’s important to recognize that these concerns often come from a genuine desire to preserve originality, hard work, and human creativity.”
Hamann made his point about the differences between AI and human approaches to problem solving. He explained that AI is good at following established paths. He illustrated his point by showing an image of an AI-generated poster and reading the prompt that created it. Then he flipped through the presentation slides.
One slide said, “Each entry must contain at least one manually created element.”
It seems that there was a human factor after all. I didn’t expect such rules to exist in a competition that mainly uses AI elements. And apparently there was a prize too. So our tuition goes there.
After the meeting ended, I heard attendees expressing general dissatisfaction with the event, so I alerted them and asked them to elaborate further on their feelings. Coincidentally, I had just pulled aside Delaney Guidi, president of the American Society of Graphic Arts club.
“I think one of the main complaints is the amount of prize money that is awarded for these types of competitions,” Guidi said. “I have never seen the same amount of money spent on a contest that focused solely on design merit.”
Elon University is defending the theft of real works by real artists, but they don’t know it.
Competition day
We arrived a few minutes earlier than planned, but the number of people seemed to be increasing. Several faces, both familiar and unfamiliar, gathered at a table set up in the Snow Family Grand Atrium. One of the attractions was the boxed dinner served at the event, which most attendees were immediately drawn to.
Mr. Hannam took the stage at around 5:05 and introduced Mr. Sagun Giri, the “AI Sandbox Coordinator.”
“This contest is about more than just writing a prompt. It’s not about letting AI do all the work,” Giri said.
Following a short word from Giri, Hannam revealed a secret prompt. “The object is a red Solo cup and the prompt is ‘Let me buy it,'” Hannam said.
Once the competition officially began, most of the participants dispersed. We caught up with our competitor Annie Gosen. He is a double major in Communication Design and Film/Television Arts. We spoke to him about his thoughts on the introduction of AI in this contest, and how he plans to utilize AI in his own entries.
“I try to avoid using it as much as possible, especially when designing in communications design classes,” Gosen says. “I’m not saying this is my strategy. It’s just what I do.”
Gosen explained to me that removing backgrounds from images with tools like Adobe Illustrator can technically be classified as using an AI tool. And she said the way the contest was marketed was somewhat misleading. The key, her professor said, was that the AI was not used to create the entire poster, but only to supplement part of the process.
And Goshen revealed to me perhaps the sweetest irony of this entire contest. The posters created to promote the contest were not generated by AI. What else do I need to say?
Scene from the award ceremony
Due to LaRose Digital Theater’s confusing naming convention, I arrived about 30 minutes later than scheduled. The LaRose Digital Theater shared its name with the easily recognizable LaRose Commons, the first place I went across campus. What immediately caught my eye was a poster from Tyler Wakelin, a student who entered without AI entirely in protest of the entire incident. I had planned to speak to them before the event, but I had to wait until after the event.
Tyler Wakelin’s poster features an image of a red solo cup overlaid with statistics and research on AI. Wakelin filed an entry without any AI in protest of the competition.
A strange atmosphere spread throughout the room. In keeping with the AI theme, the moment felt decidedly lifeless. Many participants did not bother to participate, but some of them ended up winning.
The award ceremony proceeded with the announcement of the winners from 3rd to 1st place, followed by the announcement of the judges’ favorites. Third place went to Emma Larsen, second place went to Delaney Guidi, and first place went to Trey Holmes.
After the ceremony, I pulled Wakelin aside to dig deeper into their thoughts on the convention and hear more about their method of protest: AI-free posters.
“My original idea was to chug water for two and a half hours straight as a kind of protest piece to show the use of water by AI,” Wakelin said. “I disagree with the ethical and environmental aspects of AI.”
Wakelin’s poster is covered in layers of text, much of it drawn from academic and news sources, related to ethical and environmental concerns of using AI.
Students count tickets for fan favorites during the Make Your Mark: AI Poster Competition awards ceremony on April 3 at the LaRose Digital Theater.
final thoughts
Hanlon’s Razor says that we should never attribute to malice something that can be explained by incompetence. This is clearly such a case. While this was not intended to undermine the work of Elon’s artist collective, it came across as tone-deaf, especially coming from a school that cultivates the very skills they discounted for this event.
If this event hadn’t brought AI elements to the fore, I imagine the resulting discussion would have been much more positive. It is clear that many communication school students feel as though their talents are being ignored, if not ignored, in favor of technical approaches.
There’s absolutely no excuse given the fact that the same school that hosted this competition is home to its own in-house marketing and PR agency, Live Oak Communications. Many other students, like me, urge Elon to take their own skills and sensibilities into account and create a better event before proceeding with an event that leaves everyone with a bad aftertaste.
