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AI-Generated Portrait Sells For Nearly Half a Million In Auction (bloomberg.com)
A portrait created by artificial intelligence fetched $432,500 at Christie's in New York on Thursday, the first time a computer-generated artwork was offered by a major auction house. Bloomberg reports: The print on canvas, titled "Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy," depicts a blurry and unfinished image of a man. Displayed in a gilded wooden frame, it was estimated to fetch $7,000 to $10,000 and offered as the final lot at Christie's auction of prints and multiples. The work was the brainchild of Obvious Art, a Paris-based collective, with help from an algorithm known as GAN (Generative Adversarial Network).
"We fed the system with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th century to the 20th," collective member Hugo Caselles-Dupre told Christie's. The piece sparked a bidding war among five parties that lasted about seven minutes, with an anonymous phone buyer prevailing, said Christie's spokeswoman Jennifer Cuminale.
"We fed the system with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th century to the 20th," collective member Hugo Caselles-Dupre told Christie's. The piece sparked a bidding war among five parties that lasted about seven minutes, with an anonymous phone buyer prevailing, said Christie's spokeswoman Jennifer Cuminale.
Turns out the AI that runs a giant Chinese hedge fund was really turned on by the image of a mangled human.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Guess I should have done a painting with AI then.
This is boring.
Give me 500 million U.S. dollars and you'll see new crazy rich people things!
#DeleteFacebook
Will AI come up with its own way to destroy a painting immediately after it has been sold?
I hate to say it, but I suspect this just shows that the most important part of being an artist is marketing. I doubt their AI is really all that great and probably more complex attempts at similar things have been tried. Especially considering it is coming from an art collective rather than a coding collective. Look at Banksy. Nothing really that Blek leRat or others haven't already done, but they have a nice collection of people helping them to promote and make the news. Oh well, they hit the jackpot. I hope their cool people deserving of it.
It would have fetched over a million if the program had painted some titties instead!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
At least this looks like something. I can't wait for the day when some pretentious, fart sniffing, trust fund baby blows $400k one of those modern art masterpieces that looks like a parrot crashed into a window, while going on about all the symbolism and emotion the brilliant artist put into some blurry smear of paint and how the peasant class just isn't sophisticated enough to get it, only to find out some soulless AI made it.
I'm sure they'll still find some way to justify it in a manner that eventually swings back around to 'poor people are stupid and uncultured' and the other privileged morons will eat it up, but still, I'll be laughing.
.. when the computer is turned off.
Thanks for the free art. I heard some guy paid $500k for something I just downloaded...
one of those modern art masterpieces that looks like a parrot crashed into a window
Now I'd like to see a very detailed and realistic painting of a parrot crashed into a window.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I smell a rat...
Until the money actually changes hands and the picture is shipped, it wasn't sold, just bid on.
When it is, let me know because I have a pile of really nice and rare ASCII art to put up for sale...
By the way, anybody have an extra box of tractor feed paper and a line printer I could use for few days?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"Bots took our jerbs!"
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know about that.
Anytime a rich guy consumes something, money changes hands. It goes from his hands to somebody else's hand where it's more likely to be spent.
As such, conspicuous consumption doesn't bother me. Let them have their gold plated plumbing, fancy clothes, big house and fast cars so they spend that cash, keeping it flowing though other's hands, not just locked up in their bank accounts or stuffed in the mattresses. Their spending makes it easier for me to get my hands on some of their wealth.
You see, it's not about how much more they have, it's about how much I have or can ethically get. Am I better off if they spend theirs? Yep! So let them spend, encourage them to spend even and don't look down on them for it. Because their spending is really, if you look at it right, spreading the wealth around so I can get more.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I think your A.I. is not quite ready to post on Slashdot.
#DeleteFacebook
Make me a piece of art that's a programmer working hard on an AI, that AI is the one that made the painting. Now I'd buy that for $1, at least.
Computer shows in the 80's were pretty cool if you were in middle school...
I have a nice 132 columns dot matrix printer right here, I'll let you rent it for the low, low cost of only USD$100000 per day! Shipping not included!
#DeleteFacebook
I have a nice 132 columns dot matrix printer right here, I'll let you rent it for the low, low cost of only USD$100000 per day! Shipping not included!
OK, but I'll have to pay you once I get a few pictures auctioned off OK? Oh, and will you take a check from a Nigerian prince, cash it and send me the change in cash?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You know the old saying, "a fool and his money are soon parted"? It's still true.
I've seen better refrigerator art done with crayons by toddlers. But, people are people and there will always be a few stupid ones in the bunch.
Obvious basically just took some third party code and ran it. Their contribution was printing it out, while the real "artists" making these algorithms perform well are the engineers working on the GAN architectures. I hope all proceeds are donated to the AI community.
You will spend many rage-filled years watching absolutely nothing happen to people you are mad at online, and then you will die bitter and frustrated.
Computer generated art has been sold at large auction houses for quite some time.
http://www.dazeddigital.com/ar...
What is new is that we are calling algorithms AI now. Apparently that new label erases the past.
The following is absolutely true. I damn near had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.
One of the dates I took my wife on was to the Nelson Art Museum for a show on Celtic art (circa 1990).
After show, went to shop and found book on same I wanted.
Standing in line to pay and overhear conversation behind my by a woman thinking herself an artist (graphic artist) who had just gotten CorelDraw, which she was gushing about. I used FreeLance but hey, interesting to listen.
Then she got to her "favorite thing". With a digital art program... "You get so many originals!"
Looking back, I admire the restraint I had until we got back to our car to leave.
Nothing better signal than stupid money starting to dominate.
Does anyone notice it is crap? Make a thing obscured and crappy enough and it must be great art. No.
E Proelio Veritas.
I think your A.I. is not quite ready to post on Slashdot.
Just add blockchain to it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
People in the U.S. do overwhelmingly tend to be stupid and uncultured, in ways that vary by class, but that is not entirely their fault; it is in large part the result of a government indoctrination system (schools and media) designed and intended to create exactly that result.
Nonaggression works!
How is this waste of money more senseless than the currency that paid for it? The value of the money is also based on faith that it is worth something. It is unlikely that it was paid for in paper, and the payment was made by pushing some data from one system to another. Even if the currency is backed by gold, there is still faith required that the shiny rocks are worth more than what I have in my yard.
But then no artist gives credit to the canvas maker, paint brush maker, or paint maker ...
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
"We fed the system with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th century to the 20th"
So someone paid $500K for the most generic average portrait ever produced.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.