The 2.2 meter high painting created by the robot “Ai-Da” is titled “AI God. Portrait of Alan Turing”. The work portrays the pioneering computer scientist and mathematician who was hailed as “the man who broke the Nazi code” but later vilified as a gay manÂ
It is estimated to be sold for around 142 thousand euros. But what Sotheby’s is calling the first auction of a work of art by a humanoid robot went under the hammer for nearly 1.1 million euros in New York.
The 2.2 meter high painting created by the robot “Ai-Da” is titled “AI God. Portrait of Alan Turing”. The work portrays the pioneering computer scientist and mathematician who was hailed as “the man who broke the Nazi code” but later vilified as a gay man.
“My portrait of Alan Turing on this 70th anniversary of his death is a tribute to one of the most profound thinkers in the history of technology and artificial intelligence,” said “Ai-Da”, a feminized robot. “Ai-Da” is an extremely advanced humanoid that creates works of art with its own hands. Featured at the 2022 Venice Biennale, Ai-Da’s paintings of pop legends from Diana Ross to Billie Eilish were also exhibited at the Glastonbury Festival that same year.
One person who was surprised by the events of the auction in London is Henrik Hanstein, head of the Lempertz auction house in Germany and president of the European Auction Federation.
“I didn’t expect this,” he said. “AI art is created by machines… computers that work with data from other works of art. It seems very difficult to me”.
While robot artist “Ai-Da” has shocked the art world with his portrait of mathematician Alan Turing, the life-like humanoid is itself named after British mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) and was developed at the University of Oxford in 2019. The female robot has cameras in her eyes, robot arms and can also speak thanks to AI language tools. The algorithm-controlled machine has already created several works of art, including a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. For the painting of Alain Turing (1912-1954), he painted several other paintings that were joined to form a new painting.
While the record price for the work marks a turning point in the history of contemporary art, according to Sotheby’s, art auctioneer Hanstein is far more skeptical. “The seven-figure sum is certainly being reported around the world,” he said. “But you shouldn’t overestimate it. It could be a case”. “Is it art?” asked Aidan Mellor, director of “Ai-Da Robot Studio” that created the artist, in an interview for “Reuters”. “Well that’s up to the audience to decide”
For Mellor, the project instead explores the “beginning” of what he calls the “fourth industrial revolution”. Hanstein doesn’t want to completely rule out the possibility that AI-created works could be art, even if he doesn’t believe a museum would exhibit such works.
“We must not forget that artists have always benefited from the latest opportunities and techniques,” said the auctioneer. “If it was from wood to canvas, from copper to paper and today fabric”.
Art is often ahead of its time, he noted. “This was also the case recently with NFTs. That’s why there was a buzz and crazy prices.” Just a few years later, the market for NFTs is dead and “old news”. When it comes to the art of AI, Hanstein calls for patience and caution. “You have to allow experiments”, he believes. “The art market is very critical. Collectors and curators recognize quality very quickly.” But who actually owns an AI-created piece of art? The programmer? The provider? Or the artists who used AI? Copyright experts have long debated this issue. The issue of authorship is central to the art market. And artwork that is unsigned, in the case of an AI work, “is harder to sell.” For Hanstein, the problem is clear: “The hand is missing.” “I doubt if a computer can be as creative as an artist who is ahead of his time,” said the art dealer. “But I’m glad I was surprised.” /DW
