Image: ©Ai-Da
The piece draws ‘heavily’ from Pablo Picasso, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, according to art broker Sotheby’s.
Art broker Sotheby’s has sold artwork made by the world’s first “ultra-realistic” humanoid AI robot Ai-Da for more than $1m – significantly higher than original estimations, which were between $120,000 and $180,000.
The piece, titled ‘AI God: Portrait of Alan Turing’, was created by Ai-Da this year and serves as a tribute to Alan Turing, the pioneering mathematician whose work formed the basis for modern computing and AI.
Purchased by an undisclosed buyer for $1.084m during the auction house’s Digital Art day sale on 7 November, the large mixed media artwork on canvas draws inspiration from the works of 20th-century artists like Pablo Picasso and Doris Salcedo that “portray human suffering through splintered, distorted aesthetics”, Sotheby’s noted, as well as the cautionary tales of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.
Ai-Da’s artwork is part of a series of five portraits exploring the legacy of AI, which includes a triptych (a work of art divided into three sections) of Turing, a portrait of computing pioneer Ada Lovelace as well as a self-portrait, created using a variety of AI algorithms, robotic processes and traditional artistic methods.
Calling the auction an “important moment for visual arts”, Aidan Meller, a UK-based art dealer and the creator of Ai-Da, said in a statement that the artwork “raises questions about agency, as AI gains more power”.
“Ai-Da’s portrayal of Turing not only honours his legacy but also explores the broader, transformative impact of technology on human identity, creativity, and agency, making her work a significant milestone in both art and AI,” noted Sotheby’s in its description of the portrait.
Named after Lovelace, Ai-Da was completed in 2019 after two years in development where Meller collaborated with a team of programmers, roboticists, art experts and psychologists.
Earlier this year, Ai-Da exhibited the AI God art series at the United Nations during the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva.
“AI God goes beyond a simple tribute, reflecting on Turing’s profound question: ‘Can machines think?’,” said Sotheby’s.
“This query is fundamental to Ai-Da’s existence, as she embodies Turing’s vision of machine intelligence capable of simulating human thought.”
In 2020, SiliconRepublic.com spoke to Beth Jochim, gallery director at Cueva Gallery – a gallery entirely devoted to artwork made or inspired by AI. At the time, Jochim spoke about how the gallery works with “tech-savvy artists” to grant them exposure in new markets, but also with “traditional artists” who can explore AI without needing to know how to code.
However, more recent events have soured the relationship between traditional artists and those who employ AI. Earlier this year, a copyright lawsuit filed by a group of artists against companies using text-to-image generators, including Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt, was allowed to proceed by a US judge.
While in January, AI deterrent tool Nightshade was made publicly available for artists to “poison” images, making them unsuitable for use by AI models.
Last year, a US court ruled that artwork generated by AI cannot be copyrighted. US district court judge Beryl Howell – who was presiding over a lawsuit against the US Copyright Office after it refused a copyright to Stephen Thaler for an image he generated using AI – said that copyright has never been granted to work that was “absent any guiding human hand” and that human beings are an “essential part of a valid copyright claim”.
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