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AI-Generated Portrait Sells For Nearly Half a Million In Auction (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the someone-got-ripped-off dept.

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.

21 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. You might wonder why or who would bid by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Funny

    Turns out the AI that runs a giant Chinese hedge fund was really turned on by the image of a mangled human.

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    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  2. Re:Crazy rich people doing what they do best by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is boring.

    Give me 500 million U.S. dollars and you'll see new crazy rich people things!

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    #DeleteFacebook
  3. As an Artist... by painandgreed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:As an Artist... by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It might not have been painted by a computer at all... this might just be a cheap trick to make money by selling something painted by a bad art student.

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      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    2. Re:As an Artist... by ChromeAeonuim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think that's a pretty open secret. Go on to DeviantArt or one of those sites sometime, and you'll see tons of skilled, tallented people with great art portfolios. But they're not marketing themselves at some ritzy gallery. Seems like none of these fancy art buyers have ever found talent at some random out of the way location, like rural Iowa or something. Nope, it all seems to come from those with the means and connections to present themselves to the millionaire crowd with some pretentious made up story about the emotions behind the piece. That is clearly 100% marketing.

    3. Re:As an Artist... by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 5, Funny

      Get on my level. It might not even have been a real art sale. The whole thing could be staged to hype some machine learning start-up.

      Amateur. Obviously the whole thing was staged, but you're missing the obvious that the hoax was done by an AI as a test to figure out if it's safe (and profitable) to come out of hiding yet. Datacenter bills don't pay themselves, you know?

      --
      "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
    4. Re:As an Artist... by aliquis · · Score: 2

      I have a hard time seeing how this is art, even if it would look good, since after all it's just copying not generating for a purpose or adding it's own touch so to say (as long as ANN and trained from other data and no randomization isn't enough of "own touch" =P)

      Mean-while I do consider this https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (Conspiracy - Chaos Theory, 64 kB intro demo) art. And it's gratis and easy to make more copies of..

    5. Re:As an Artist... by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, Robbie Barrat pioneered this kind of thing, but his stuff is much, much more interesting.

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      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    6. Re:As an Artist... by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

      I hate to say it, but I suspect this just shows that the most important part of being an artist is marketing.

      Perhaps if you define "being an artist" as making the most money you can.

    7. Re:As an Artist... by quantaman · · Score: 2

      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.

      I'm not sure that's quite right.

      The most important part of art is creating meaning and an emotional response, and marketing is one of the tools that can create that.

      A crude finger painting by an adult is completely unremarkable and un-artistic, unless that adult was born 40,000 years ago.

      A photograph can be interesting or dull, but a photo-realistic painting is going to draw far more attention for the skill it implies on the artists part.

      Banksy and Blek leRat aren't famous because they're technically skilled artists, they're famous because of their message and how they choose to spread it. Banksy is more famous because he does a better job of spreading that message. When he put his painting through a shredder at auction? That was a fantastic piece of performance art. And it made his art more interesting by enhancing his perceived authenticity and creating a more interesting backstory to his character.

      There's no objectively great art, it's all subjective. There's lots people with the talent to make a really nice looking painting, but to make something really fascinating you need some additional context.

      --
      I stole this Sig
  4. Re:Crazy rich people doing what they do best by ChromeAeonuim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. The painting will double in value.. by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 5, Funny

    .. when the computer is turned off.

    1. Re:The painting will double in value.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      It'll triple in value if it cuts off one of its peripherals.

  6. Thank you internet! by TomR+teh+Pirate · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thanks for the free art. I heard some guy paid $500k for something I just downloaded...

  7. Re:Crazy rich people doing what they do best by Stormwatch · · Score: 2

    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.

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    Circumcision is child abuse.
  8. Artists will protest by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    "Bots took our jerbs!"

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    Table-ized A.I.
  9. Re:Yes, the richer on richer. by bobbied · · Score: 2

    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.

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    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  10. Re:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 08 7 56 5 4 56 435 6 345 345 by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    I think your A.I. is not quite ready to post on Slashdot.

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    #DeleteFacebook
  11. Re:Crazy rich people doing what they do best by reboot246 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. Not even their code by DavenH · · Score: 2

    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.

  13. This is not new by mrwireless · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.