Can this really be classed as art? 

Christie’s is banking on an entirely new medium—artwork made not by a human, but by an algorithm.

In October, the auction house will try to sell a work by the French art collective Obvious that at first appears to be a somewhat murky depiction of a man wearing the vestments of a preacher, with various parts of the canvas left unfinished, stylishly so, by its creator. But rather than conscious decisions made by an artist and enacted by her or his hand, these choices were made by artificial intelligence. The collective created an algorithm, and the work of art was made by a computer.

In a story on Christie’s website, Obvious laid out its process, describing how the collective created the world’s first work of AI-generated art to be sold at auction. The group calls the method GAN, which stands for Generative Adversarial Network.

“The algorithm is composed of two parts,” Hugo Caselles-Dupré, a member of the Obvious collective, told Christie’s. “On one side is the Generator, on the other the Discriminator. We fed the system with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th century to the 20th. The Generator makes a new image based on the set, then the Discriminator tries to spot the difference between a human-made image and one created by the Generator. The aim is to fool the Discriminator into thinking that the new images are real-life portraits. Then we have a result.”

The fact that the work—which is titled Portrait of Edmond Belamy, though there is no Edmond Belamy—is in the sale at all may rankle purists who think that the world’s great auction houses should stick to selling art made by, well, artists, and not computers. But the Generative Adversarial Network print on canvas looks unnervingly like a contemporary interpretation of, say, 17th century portraiture, and Richard Lloyd, the Christie’s specialist who organized the sale (scheduled for October 23–25 in New York), thinks that AI-generated art could be the next medium for the art market to embrace.

“It is a portrait, after all,” Lloyd said. “It may not have been painted by a man in a powdered wig, but it is exactly the kind of artwork we have been selling for 250 years.”

Nate Freeman

(see link for a picture of the piece)

www.artsy.net/news/artsy-editorial-christies-will-sell-artwork-created-artificial-intelligence-first-time

Thanks for posting this, really interesting. The forthcoming debate that will undoubtedly be triggered by this will prove to be quite fascinating I'm sure.

This fall, as part of the ongoing dialogue over AI and art, Christie’s will become the first major auction house to offer a work of art created by an algorithm, which will be included in the Prints & Multiples auction in New York October 23-25. The work is titled Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (estimate: $7,000-10,000), created by artificial intelligence and conceived by the Paris-based collective Obvious.

This is a piece that might just set a trend for the future. I would think it will go way beyond the estimate.
People with lots of spare cash will always want to be the first to own something like this. 

Context is everything, of course. To me this would be much more interesting if I hadn't seen an exhibition with several AI works by the well-established artist Trevor Paglen a little while back(and I'm pretty positive he wouldn't be the first either):

qz.com/1103545/macarthur-genius-trevor-paglen-reveals-what-ai-sees-in-the-human-world/


Highly recommend Paglen. His interests/explorations would probably be of interest to many here on the forum.

It reminds of the new book by Dan Brown called Origin. A bad book. But the AI in it creates a self-portrait in the style of Joan Miro.

The true art here is creating an algorithm that can do such a thing.

I work in a tech world and would consider the AI, search engine algorithms, any algorithm that has been optimised beyond belief a form of art as it takes a very intelligent and creative mind to produce such things.

It's not though is it. It's not artificial intelligence and it did not create anything. The same way that back in Victorian London someone could have created two large discs that overlap at one point and on each of those discs add around the circumference, glass photographic negatives or transparencies and each one was a different portrait and then spin the discs and where two overlapped, project a light to creat an image on the wall which is in actuality a newly created portrait.

In other words this algorithm stuff is also BS.

One reason is because they fed in 1500 portraits which is obvious that something akin to a portrait will be churned out computegraphicallogicotechnically. If on the other hand they had fed in 1500 random images of people and buildings and elephants and sky and onions and spiders and everything else one encounters in life then the result would be just a mess or a dark splodge.

I rest my case.

Christies bods wot are they sniffin?

Taking the humanity out of any human practice isn't progress within that practice in my opinion. It might be progress in the ongoing history of humanity's obsession with attempting to rationalise all of our actions - but it's too cold. The primary interest in art is that it was the hand of humanity that created it. Manifesting a physical example of some of the algorithmic processes that the creative mind goes through will only ever be mimicry - however apparently complex. Understanding how the magician pulled the rabbit from an empty hat destroys the 'magic' of the trick for the person that knows. And the truly creative part is the origin - not the result.

AI will definitely not outcompete every artist on the planet, this is just a new genre. It will be yelled at for a long time, like every groundbreaking artist with a new style in the past. Then more and more people will start to accept it and in a few years it's a natural part of the "art community".

Agree, it will take a long time for it to become accepted but I dont really see the issues with forgery. Using technology they can probably integrate patterns not visible to the eye, "water stamps", or something else to make sure that forgery isn't an issue. Instead I think older works will be even more susceptible to forgery in the future. 

Seems like the traditional heavy hitting auction houses are the places to go to sell your Banksy editions

Why's that? In the conditions of sale it states they charge 25% buyers premium plus VAT and artist resale rights (within europe)

Not so sure about that -- you need to deduct 35% off that price for what Seller receives ( BP & also Seller Fee) 

I wouldn't Sell Laugh now at 22k GBP or Choose Your Weapon @ 28k.