The point of a stunt like this is to prove that a non-photo can win a photography contest, and to highlight how absurd that is.
Would it have been better if someone had earnestly submitted an AI “photo” and accepted the prize quietly instead?
Reducing this to just a “douche move” seems to miss the forest for the trees. The contest will cease to exist or at minimum cease to have any value/meaning if AI submissions become the norm. An alternate framing is that such a form of protest is a necessary inoculation to prevent infinite “douche moves” going forward.
Look at how much praise athletes got by proving they could win contests using doping. They got none because it’s a douche move, even if it’s technically not illegal it’s still cheating, even if they never pick up the prize it’s still ruining the contest. Everyone can imagine you can win a race on doping, nobody learned anything.
(1) He says specifically that he intended it as a stunt
(2) He didn't edit any image with AI, he generated it from nothing with text.
As it was intended to be a photo competition, he felt that AI images don't deserve to win "photography" competitions.
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Often the only way to secure anything is to try and break it. This is what we do with penetration testing in technology systems.
The problem is that the organizers aren't being proactive, so sometimes the only next step is some grey-hat stepping in to wave a big flag and saying, "hey, you might want to fix this"