Jason M. Allen

Jason M. Allen is a tabletop-game designer from Pueblo West, Colorado, who runs the studio Incarnate Games. In August 2022 he entered three Midjourney-generated, Photoshop-finished images in the Colorado State Fair’s emerging-artist digital-art category — disclosing the tool as “Jason M. Allen via Midjourney” — and took first place with “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” a $300 prize that detonated the modern AI-art debate.

The picture that started the war

When the win went viral, artists accused him of automating creativity itself; Allen was defiant, telling The New York Times he would not apologize and had broken no rules. Two judges later said they would have awarded the piece first place even knowing it was AI-generated. Allen has said the final image took roughly 80 hours and over 600 prompt iterations before Photoshop retouching and Gigapixel upscaling.

The aftermath turned him into a copyright test case. He applied to register the work in September 2022; the Copyright Office refused, and in September 2023 its Review Board issued a final denial, ruling the human contribution “de minimis.” In September 2024 Allen sued the Copyright Office in Colorado federal court, arguing that his 624 prompt interactions constituted authorship — a case still being watched as a bellwether for whether AI-assisted work can be owned at all.

There is irony his critics relish: Allen has complained that the unprotectable image is endlessly ripped off, telling reporters the denial cost him significant licensing income. His famous “art is dead” line is frequently quoted against the pro-AI side — though Allen himself has framed it less as a boast than a provocation about where technology was inevitably headed.