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This piece of AI art sold for US$432,500 at Christie's

By Kenny Yeo - on 26 Oct 2018, 10:29am

This piece of AI art sold for US$432,500 at Christie's

Just yesterday, a piece of AI-generated art sold for US$432,500 including fees. This was more than an Andy Warhol print (US$75,000) and a Roy Lichtenstein bronze work (US$87,500) combined.

It was only estimated to fetch between US$7,000 and US$10,000, so the final hammer price came as a surprise to everyone. The buyer was an anonymous phone bidder.

The piece, called Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy, was created by French art collective Obvious. It was generated using an algorithm called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs).

A GAN pits neural networks against each other. One network looks for patterns in a dataset and generates copies. Another then looks at the generated copies and tries to differentiate it from the original. If it can, it sends it back. The first network then adjusts and tries again until it can create a convincing copy.

The Verge has an excellent analogy:

 Think of it like a bouncer at a club: sending your drunk friend away until they act sober enough to get in.

In a statement, Obvious said:

It is an exciting moment. Our hope is that the spotlight on this sale will bring forward the amazing work that our predecessors and colleagues have been producing.

I'm no art connoisseur but I think it looks pretty rad and it's impressive how far AI has come along that it can now even create art. But is it US$432,500 impressive? I'm not sure. I guess the only concrete thing we can learn from this is that beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder.

Source: The New York Times

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