Christie’s has launched its first-ever sale dedicated to artworks created with artificial intelligence (AI), riding the AI revolution wave — a move by the famed auction house that has sparked anger among some artists.
The sale, titled “Augmented Intelligence,” features about 20 pieces and runs online until March 5.
Christie’s, like its competitor Sotheby’s, has previously offered AI-created items, but had never devoted an entire sale to this medium.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“AI has become more prolific in everybody’s daily lives,” Christie’s head of digital art sales Nicole Sales Giles said.
“More people understand the process and the technology behind AI and so are more readily able to appreciate AI also in creative fields,” she said.
The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 transformed public perceptions of generative AI and opened new possibilities for its widespread use.
The market is now crowded with AI models that allow users to generate drawings, animated images or photo-realistic images through simple natural language requests.
The use of algorithms in the art world, it turns out, is almost as old as modern computing itself. Christie’s is offering a work by US artist Charles Csuri dating from 1966.
As a pioneer of computer art, he distinguished himself by using software to distort one of his hand-drawn sketches.
“All artists in the fine art sense, and particularly the artists that were featured in this auction, use AI to supplement their existing practices,” Sales Giles said.
The collection includes paintings, sculptures, photographs and giant screens displaying entirely digital works.
Among the sale’s highlights is Emerging Faces (estimated to sell for up to US$250,000) by US artist Pindar Van Arman, a series of nine paintings resulting from a “conversation” between two AI models.
The first model paints a face on canvas while the second stops it when it recognizes a human form.
The sale has not been welcomed by all, and an online petition calling for its cancellation has gathered more than 6,300 signatures.
Many of the submitted works “were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license,” the petition says.
It says the sale contributes to the “mass theft of human artists’ work.”
Several artists filed lawsuits in 2023 against generative AI start-ups, including popular platforms Midjourney and Stability AI, accusing them of violating intellectual property laws.
Digital art heavyweight Refik Anadol, who is participating in the event with his animated creation Machine Hallucinations, defended the sale on X, saying the “majority of the artists in the project [are] specifically pushing and using their own datasets + their own models.”
Petition signatory and illustrator Reid Southern said that at a minimum, pieces should be excluded that do not use the artist’s own software or data — accounting for perhaps one-third of the sale.
“If these were oil paintings,” he said, and there “was a strong likelihood that many of them were either counterfeit or forgeries or stolen or unethical in some way, I don’t believe it would be ethical for Christie to continue the auction.”
“I’m not a copyright lawyer, so I can’t comment on the legality specifically, but the idea that artists have been looking at prior artists to influence their current work is not new,” Sales Giles said.
“Every new artistic movement generates controversy and criticism,” she added.
“Midjourney is trained on basically the entirety of the Internet,” said Turkish artist Sarp Kerem Yavuz, who used this software to create Hayal, also being auctioned at Christie’s.
“There’s so much information [out there] that you cannot infringe on individual copyright,” he said.
“That’s essentially arguing that it’s bad to steal from one or two people, but it’s okay to steal from millions of people, right?” Southern said.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan