AI Auctions at Sotheby’s — How Much Is Robot Art Worth?

Key Takeaways

• An artwork created by the robot Ai-Da will be auctioned at Sotheby’s at the end of the month.
• Launched in 2019, Ai-Da incorporates AI and robotics to create paintings.
• Other similar initiatives have also attracted the attention of major auction houses.

An artwork by the robot artist Ai-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1 million , significantly exceeding its $120,000 to $180,000 estimate.

The piece, a dark and distorted portrait of Alan Turing titled “A.I. God,” is Ai-Da’s most valuable to date and points to the art world’s burgeoning interest in artificial intelligence.

Ai-Da’s Alan Turing Painting Sells for Record $1M

First revealed to the public in 2019, Ai-Da represents the union of two techno-artistic traditions: machines that paint and neural networks that generate images.

While the exact computer vision model AI-Da uses isn’t known, various types of generative adversarial networks (GAN) and stable diffusion models have become tools of choice for artists like Refik Anadol and Mario Klingemann.

However, unlike other artists in the space, the project’s technical innovation lies in AI-da’s camera “eye” and ability to manipulate paint on canvas.

As much as AI-Da is made possible by modern neural networks, the project also recalls Harold Cohen’s AARON. Programming drawing and painting machines with a previously unseen degree of artistic autonomy, AARON used random variables to make its own decisions on coloring and composition.

Similar Artworks

Today, Ai-Da is a manifestation of AARON’s legacy that demonstrates just how far AI and robotics have come in 50 years.

Although it is the most well-known AI art robot, other similar projects have also attracted attention.

Sougwen Chung’s Doug (Drawing Operations Unit Generation) consists of a robotic arm powered by AI software. It explores the notion of human-machine co-creation, with the artist and her robot working together to create paintings.

Meanwhile, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s “Can’t Help Myself” employed an industrial robot and complex visual-recognition system in a unique blend of AI performance and kinetic sculpture.

Is AI Art Valuable?

Having sold for seven figures, “A.I. God” is Ai-Da’s most valuable artwork and has achieved one of the highest prices ever fetched at auction for a piece created by AI.

The still-young AI art movement had its breakout moment in 2018, when “Portrait of Edmond Belamy” by French collective Obvious sold at Christie’s for $432,500, marking the first time a major auction house listed a piece of GAN art.

The sale was controversial because Obvious used an open-source neural network built by another artist without attribution, raising the question of who takes credit for AI art.

Probably the most well-known artist in the space is Refik Anadol, who has made over $30 million selling his artworks as NFTs. In 2021, his most valuable piece, “Machine Hallucinations — Space: Metaverse,” raised over $2.3 million at a Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction.