Excire’s 10th Anniversary Photo Contest Is Judged by AI

German artificial intelligence (AI) company PRC, known for its AI-powered Excire photo-management software, has announced a new photo contest featuring AI judging.

Excire’s “People in Focus” competition, which runs from June 1 to June 30, invites photographers to submit their best people-centric photos, whether portraits, candid street scenes, or everyday moments. The contest is free to enter and open to both amateur and professional photographers. A prize pool of $7,000 is up for grabs.

However, what sets this contest apart from other photography competitions is that it will not be judged by a jury of professional photographers or industry experts, but instead, it will be judged entirely by Excire’s in-house AI model, which the company has developed exclusively to analyze and score photos based on their aesthetic qualities. This means that not only are photos judged instantaneously as they are entered, but the contest will also feature a live leaderboard. As photographers submit their work, they can see how they compare to the competition.

When entries close on June 30 at 11:59 PM CEST, the first-place winner will be crowned and win $4,000. Second-place wins $2,000, and third-place rounds things out with a still-impressive $1,000 prize. Further, all participants will receive a 20% discount code to use on Excire products, valid through June 30, 2025.

This contest marks a pair of milestones for PRC. It is the company’s 20th anniversary, and the 10th anniversary of Excire software. PetaPixel has covered the software many times over the years, including most recently for Excire Foto 2025, which promises to be the company’s fast photo culling software yet. Excire Foto supports natural language search prompts, AI-powered sorting and culling, automatic AI keyboarding, and more.

“Photographers spend hundreds of hours each year on tedious photo-management tasks, from organizing and finding specific shots to selecting the best images from a vacation or photoshoot,” says Professor Erhardt Barth, CEO of PRC and machine learning expert at the University of Lübeck. “Excire’s AI helps photographers bypass these time-consuming tasks so they can spend more time taking photos and appreciating their own hard work.”

Excire says its AI judge has been trained by expert photographers using hundreds of thousands of photos. The company says this AI-judged contest, while designed to give photographers a fun way to win money and open up a dialogue surrounding the use of AI in photography, also has the benefit of “extreme fairness.”

“Human judges can be inconsistent and biased,” PRC says. “Excire’s AI judge, however, analyzes submissions with unerring consistency.”

“Of course, artificial intelligence can’t replace human taste,” Professor Barth says. “But it can objectively analyze what makes a photo great. Excire’s AI offers impartial evaluations without subjective bias and has already served as a juror in several prestigious photo contests.”

Photographers will be able to enter their images on this dedicated competition page beginning on June 1. There they can also find the complete rules and regulations for the competition.

Image credits: Excire