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Al Arabiya
06-03-2025
- Business
- Al Arabiya
Christie's first AI art auction sees hits ... and plenty of misses
Christie's first auction of art made by artificial intelligence (AI) ended Wednesday with mixed results, providing scant clues as to the future of the new and controversial medium. Fourteen of the 34 lots put on the block during the 14-day online auction either received no qualifying bids or were sold for less than the minimum Christie's had estimated. One did go for more than expected, an animation by well-known digital artist Refik Anadol titled 'Machine Hallucinations - ISS Dreams - A' which fetched the highest price at $277,200. But an 'Emerging Faces' creation by American artist Pindar Van Arman, touted as another highlight of the auction, saw no qualifying bids. A work by the late American artist Charles Csuri, considered a pioneer of 'computer art,' went for $50,400, slightly below the bottom of a price range announced by the auction house. Auction sales tallied $728,784 in total, according to Christie's. For Nicole Sales Giles, Christie's director of digital art, the auction's results confirm that collectors recognize the influence and importance of the artists whose creations were featured. 'There could have been a better selection of works that are more representative of new media and AI,' said Steven Sacks, founder of New York gallery bitforms, which has been exhibiting digital art since 2001. 'The bigger conversation is -- should they be at auction yet?' Sacks felt more time was still needed to educate people about the medium and for artists to gain credibility and exposure. A separate group of artists had launched a petition urging Christie's to cancel the sale. The 6,490 or so signatories argued that some pieces had been created with the help of AI models 'known to have made unauthorized use of works protected by intellectual property law.' For them, auctioning AI-created art lets money be made from 'massive theft of works by human artists.' In 2023, several artists sued generative AI start-ups, including popular platforms Midjourney and Stability AI, contending the software models were 'trained' with human-made works to which they had no rights. Christie's and rival Sotheby's have featured AI-created works at auctions in the past, but this was Christie's first event devoted to works conceived with the new technology. In 2018, an algorithm-generated painting by French collective Obvious fetched $432,500, including fees and commissions, stunning the art world. And in 2022, an animated work by Refik Anadol was acquired, also at Christie's, for $1.38 million.
Iraqi News
22-02-2025
- Business
- Iraqi News
Christie's first-ever AI sale angers some artists
New York – Christie's has launched its first-ever sale dedicated to artworks created with artificial intelligence, 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. 'AI has become more prolific in everybody's daily lives,' said Nicole Sales Giles, Christie's head of digital art sales. '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 artificial intelligence 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 American artist Charles Csuri (1922-2022) 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,' said Sales Giles. 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 $250,000) by American 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. – 'Controversy and criticism' – 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,' it says. The petition says the sale contributes to the 'mass theft of human artists' work.' Several artists filed lawsuits in 2023 against generative AI startups, 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 don't use the artist's own software or data — accounting for perhaps one-third of the sale, he said. '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.' Sales Giles responded: '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. 'Every new artistic movement generates controversy and criticism,' she added. 'Midjourney is trained on basically the entirety of the internet,' said noted 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. Southern, the illustrator, pushed back. '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?' he said.
Euronews
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Christie's to host groundbreaking auction featuring only AI art
Kicking off on 20 February and running until 5 March, the 'Augmented Intelligence' sale at Christie's in New York will showcase more than 20 works from AI pioneers like Refik Anadol, Pinar Van Arman, and Claire Silver, spanning everything from early neural network experiments to contemporary creations. This marks the first time a major auction house has hosted an exclusive AI art auction. The collection will include a diverse mix of pieces – some of which are NFTs, while others are physical works such as sculptures, paintings, and prints. Perhaps the most intriguing lot will be 'Emerging Faces' (2017) by Pinar Van Arman, a series of abstract portraits painted by two AI agents. The AI algorithms work together, one generating human faces while the other halts the process once a face is detected. The evocative – even haunting – results are considered among the first to be painted autonomously by neural networks. Another unique feature of the sale is the inclusion of an interactive robot painting. The 3.7-metre-tall (12 feet) robot, created by Alexander Reben, will be on hand at the Rockefeller Center gallery, where it will paint a new section of the canvas in real time as online bids increase. Starting at just $100, bidders can watch the art take shape as the auction progresses. Alongside these works, husband-and-wife duo Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst will present their Embedding Study' (2024) pieces, which were part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial. These works, which feature a character in a bulky spacesuit, are based on Herndon's appearance and made using a text-to-image AI model. Though the majority of the pieces are expected to fetch significant sums, there has been some controversy surrounding the auction. Reid Southern, an illustrator, published an open letter calling on artists not to auction works that may have been created using AI models trained on copyrighted works without permission. 'Many of the works you are planning to put up for auction use AI models trained on copyrighted works,' reads the letter, 'AI models and the companies behind them exploit human artists and use their works without permission or compensation to build commercial AI products that compete with artists.' As of Monday 10 February, the letter had been signed by over 3,400 people, with many citing concerns about the ethics behind using AI in art creation. For its part, Christie's wrote on X that the sale 'challenges us to rethink the limits of artistic agency'. The auction house is optimistic and is expecting the auction to bring in at least $600,000 (€581,000), with cryptocurrency being accepted as payment for most of the lots. Christie's has already made its mark in the digital art world, not least with a landmark non-fungible token (NFT) auction in 2021. On 11 March 2021, the auction house made history by selling Beeple's 'Everydays: The First 5000 Days' for a staggering $69 million €66.8 million) – the first major auction house to bring NFTs to the global stage. In November, Sotheby's New York made waves by selling a painting created by Ai-Da, a humanoid robot powered by AI, for $1,084,800 (€1 million).
