There's a hilarious illustration from Paris in late 1839, mere months after an early type of photograph called a daguerreotype was announced to the world, that warned what this tiny picture portended. In Théodore Maurisset's imagination, the daguerreotype would bring about a collective hysteria, La Daguerréotypomanie, in which crazed masses arrive from the ends of the earth and overrun a small photo studio. Some in the crowd want pictures of themselves, but, mon Dieu, others demand cameras to take their own pictures--Maurisset shows them loading the machines like contraband onto steamships bound for foreign ports--and still others throng simply to ogle at this newfangled thing and all the lunatic proceedings surrounding it. The clamor is so feverish that it brings about a mass hallucination, in which nearly everything else in the landscape around the studio, including railroad cars, a clock tower, a basket for a hot air balloon, indeed anything remotely boxy in shape, morphs into cameras. As they march to the studio, the crowds pass by half a dozen gallows, where in response to the daguerreotype's appearance artists have hung themselves.

Jason M. Allen was almost too nervous to enter his first art competition. Now, his award-winning image is sparking controversy about whether art can be generated by a computer, and what, exactly, it means to be an artist. In August, Allen, a game designer who lives in Pueblo West, Colorado, won first place in the emerging artist division's "digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography" category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. His winning image, titled "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" (French for "Space Opera Theater"), was made with Midjourney -- an artificial intelligence system that can produce detailed images when fed written prompts. A $300 prize accompanied his win.

This year, the Colorado State Fair's annual art competition gave out prizes in all the usual categories: painting, quilting, sculpture. He created it with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence program that turns lines of text into hyper-realistic graphics. Mr. Allen's work, "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial," took home the blue ribbon in the fair's contest for emerging digital artists -- making it one of the first A.I.-generated pieces to win such a prize, and setting off a fierce backlash from artists who accused him of, essentially, cheating. Reached by phone on Wednesday, Mr. Allen defended his work. He said that he had made clear that his work -- which was submitted under the name "Jason M. Allen via Midjourney" -- was created using A.I., and that he hadn't deceived anyone about its origins.