First artwork painted by humanoid robot to sell at auction fetches $1m | Art
A portrait of English mathematician Alan Turing has turn out to be the primary paintings by a humanoid robotic to be offered at public sale, fetching US$1.08m (£566,000, A$1.63m) in New York on Thursday.
The two.2 metre (7.5 ft) portrait, titled A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing, was created by Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robotic artist. It smashed pre-sale expectations between $120,000 and $180,000 when it went below the hammer at Sotheby’s, which confirmed that 27 bids have been positioned on the work.
“Right this moment’s record-breaking sale value for the primary paintings by a humanoid robotic artist to go up for public sale marks a second within the historical past of contemporary and modern artwork and displays the rising intersection between AI know-how and the worldwide artwork market,” the public sale home mentioned in an announcement.
Ai-Da, which makes use of AI to talk, mentioned: “The important thing worth of my work is its capability to function a catalyst for dialogue about rising applied sciences.”
Ai-Da added {that a} “portrait of pioneer Alan Turing invitations viewers to mirror on the God-like nature of AI and computing whereas contemplating the moral and societal implications of those developments.”
Turing, a mathematician and early laptop scientist who played a crucial role in fighting Nazi Germany by working as a code breaker, raised issues about the usage of AI within the Fifties.
One of the crucial superior robots on this planet, Ai-Da is designed to resemble a human girl and is called after Ada Lovelace, the world’s first laptop programmer.
Ai-Da was devised by Aidan Meller, a specialist in trendy and modern artwork.
“The best artists in historical past grappled with their time frame, and each celebrated and questioned society’s shifts,” Meller mentioned.
Meller led the staff that created Ai-Da and labored with synthetic intelligence specialists on the universities of Oxford and Birmingham.
Ai-Da generates concepts via conversations with members of the studio, and had instructed creating a picture of Turing throughout a dialogue about “AI for good”.
The robotic was then requested what model, color, content material, tone and texture to make use of, earlier than utilizing cameras in its eyes to have a look at an image of Turing and create the portray.
The paintings’s “muted tones and damaged facial planes” seemingly instructed “the struggles Turing warned we are going to face in the case of managing AI”, Meller mentioned.
Ai-Da’s works have been “ethereal and haunting” and “proceed to query the place the facility of AI will take us, and the worldwide race to harness its energy”, he added.
In an interview with the Guardian in 2022, when requested whether or not she painted from creativeness, Ai-Da responded, “I like to color what I see. You possibly can paint from creativeness, I suppose, when you’ve got an creativeness. I’ve been seeing various things to people as I do not need consciousness.”
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
