Our next open source AI art competition will begin this Sunday; deadline March 31 - you have a month to push yourself + open models to their limits!
A month-long competition offers $50K prize pool and a 4.5KG Toblerone trophy to top AI artists.
Arca Gidan has announced its second major open-source AI art competition, designed to push the creative limits of publicly available generative models. Following feedback from their November event, organizers have extended the submission window to a full month (March 1-31) and significantly boosted the prize pool to $50,000. The top four winners will receive cash prizes substantial enough to purchase at least one of NVIDIA's anticipated next-generation 5090 GPUs, with the champion also receiving a unique 4.5KG Toblerone chocolate bar as a trophy. The competition emphasizes the use of open models, challenging artists to explore their capabilities without proprietary tools.
Beyond the cash and hardware incentives, winners gain a major professional showcase: they will be flown to Paris to exhibit their work at the ADOS (AI, Data, Open Source) conference from April 17-19, thanks to a partnership with creative app company Lightricks. The contest timeline includes theme announcements on March 1, submission opening on March 22, and winner announcements on April 2. This initiative serves as a high-stakes benchmark for open-source AI art, directing significant resources and visibility toward community-driven model development and artistic innovation outside walled gardens like Midjourney or DALL-E 3.
- $50,000 total prize pool with top prizes funding next-gen NVIDIA 5090 GPU purchases
- One-month submission window (March 1-31) for creating art exclusively with open AI models
- Winners flown to Paris for the ADOS conference in April for professional exhibition
Why It Matters
Directly funds and incentivizes the open-source AI art ecosystem, providing real hardware resources and major exposure to artists.