Christie’s Augmented Intelligence sale, its first dedicated to art made using artificial intelligence (AI), which ran from 20 February until 5 March, has been contentious to say the least. An open letter posted online on 8 February and garnering almost 6,500 signatures called on Christie’s to cancel the auction (it did not).
“Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license,” the (brief) letter alleges. “These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them.”
The letter was addressed to Christie’s digital art specialists and heads of sale Nicole Sales Giles and Sebastian Sanchez. In February, a spokesperson for the auction house told The Art Newspaper: "The artists represented in this sale all have strong, existing multidisciplinary art practices, some recognised in leading museum collections. The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work."
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Embedding Study 1 & 2 (from the xhairymutantx series)
Courtesy of Christie's
But, as the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity and the controversy spilt an unusual amount of ink on the usually dry subject of an online timed auction. The sale, which finished earlier today, contained 34 lots dating from the 1960s to today and totalled a middling $728,784 (with fees), against a pre-sale low estimate of $600,000 (calculated without fees).
Speaking after the sale, Sales Giles said in a statement: “With this project, our goal was to spotlight the brilliant creative voices pushing the boundaries of technology and art. We also hoped collectors and the wider community would recognize their influence and significance in today’s artistic landscape. The results of this sale confirmed that they did.”
By far the top lot was Machine Hallucinations – ISS Dreams – A (2021) by Refik Anadol, the pioneering Turkish-American artist known for his large-scale immersive installations who plans to open the first AI arts museum, Dataland, in Los Angeles later this year. Part of Anadol’s ongoing Machine Hallucinations series, ISS Dreams takes satellite imagery of Earth and 1.2m images taken by the International Space Station and turns them into a moving AI-driven data painting that plays on a 16-minute video loop. It sold for $277,200 (with fees), above its $150,000-$200,000 estimate (calculated without fees).
Charles Csuri’s Bspline Men (1966)
Courtesy of Christie's
Then there was Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Embedding Study 1 & 2 (from the xhairymutantx series), commissioned for last year’s Whitney Biennial, which sold for $94,500 (with fees) against an estimate of $70,000-$90,000. The work depicts a cartoonish version of Herndon in a spacesuit-cum-Michelin Man outfit, part of a series produced by a text-to-image AI model trained on altered images of Herndon.
The earliest work in the sale was Charles Csuri’s Bspline Men (1966), an experimental figurative work of a bearded man made using a B-spline, a mathematical function. The ink-on-paper work came from the estate of Csuri, a pioneer of generative art, and sold for $50,400 with fees (est $55,000-$65,000).
Another early work on offer was Harold Cohen’s Untitled (i23-3758), an ink-on-paper piece made in 1987 using Cohen’s own AI drawing programme AARON, developed in the late 1960s. The drawing sold for $11,340 with fees (est $10,000-$15,000).
Six lots in the auction failed to sell: Robbie Barrat and Ronan Barrot’s Infinite Skull #21 (est $10,000-$15,000); Pindar Van Arman’s Emerging Faces (est $180,000-$250,000 — the highest estimate in the sale); Jake Elwes’s Zizi – Queering the Dataset (est $18,000-$25,000); Huemin’s Dream-0 #9 (est $30,000-$50,000); Botto’s Siamese Cycle in Absurdism (est $20,000-$30,000) and Ivona Tau’s Nightcall (Not AI) (est $7,000-$10,000).
A report published late last year by the insurance company Hiscox, with research conducted by ArtTactic, found that new buyers are more likely to embrace AI art than more established collectors. Christie’s trumpeted the fact that a huge 37% of registered bidders for the Augmented Intelligence sale were completely new to the auction house, and nearly half (48%) of bidders were Millennials or Gen Z.
The Hiscox report also outlines an oft-muffled distinction between the market for NFTs (which famously boomed in 2021-22, then collapsed) and that for AI art. The report says that “auction sales of AI and generative art reached a new peak in 2023. There are also signs that NFT collectors are looking for more sophistication, purpose and content."
The Christie’s auction may have gone ahead in the face of opposition, but the vexed relationship between the copyright of “human artists” and art made using artificial intelligence is only going to intensify as it becomes more prevalent.
