Augmented Intelligence is the auction launched by Christie’s that is dividing the followers of the art world. A letter indeed wants to stop it. After the first auction in which works created by Artificial Intelligence were sold, Christie’s does not stop. It will be the first to hold an auction exclusively of works produced by A.I. but in collaboration with the human being.
The open letter to stop the Augmented Intelligence auction
Yet, the concern among industry insiders is high. An open letter to stop the sale is addressed to the auction house. It is thought that it could encourage the “mass theft” of artists’ works by artificial intelligence companies. Thousands of artists have already signed the letter addressed to Nicole Sales Giles and Sebastian Sanchez. They are respectively the vice president and director of digital art sales at Christie’s. To be precise, 3,600 signatures have been collected. Among the accusations expressed in the letter is that some of the works were created using I.A. models “trained on copyrighted works without a license”.
The Augmented Intelligence auction
It’s called “Augmented Intelligence” and includes 20 lots that will be auctioned in an online auction from February 20 to March 5, 2025. But what are Artificial Intelligences capable of creating? Everything: from painting to sculpture, from digital works to interactive experiences.
The challenge was launched after Sotheby’s, last November, auctioned an artwork created by Ai-Da, A.I. robot, for 1 million dollars. In that case, there was no intervention from any human being.
Who are the artists if the works are executed by AI?
Who are the artists involved? Refik Anadol, Claire Silver, Pinder Van Arman, Alexander Reben, Linda Dounia, the couple Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, as well as the A.I. pioneer Harold Cohen.
Behind artificial intelligence is the mind of artists who coordinate the tools in the hands of AI to enhance their creativity. According to Nicole Sales Giles, vice president and digital art director at Christie’s, it is proof that human action is not replaced but rather assisted. However, numerous protests are arising, and there is high concern related to the phenomenon itself and particularly to this auction.
The works present at Christie’s auction
One of the works for sale is a diptych by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst that the duo has already presented at the Whitney Biennale of 2024, xhairymutantx. For this series, the artists provided prompts to a “text-to-image” artificial intelligence, also providing photographs of Herndon. In this way, each image generated by textual requests also features the woman’s braided red hair and blue eyes. The works, Embedding Study 1 and 2, have an estimate of 70,000 to 90,000 dollars.
Van Arman presents nine canvases from the series Emerging Faces, created using two generative A.I. models simultaneously. While the first paints faces, the second does not recognize them as human. One of the paintings was donated by the collector Cosomo de’ Medici to the permanent collection of the L.A. County Museum of Art. The series is estimated at $180,000–$250,000.
The first evolving artwork sold at an auction
Reben has set up a 12 by 10-meter painting robot, built by the robotics company Matr Labs, in the central district of Christie’s (Rockefeller Center). The robot paints the canvas and will only finish it at the end of the auction, so its work is “in progress.” The brushstrokes are made only when a bid is placed, and the duration of the act is determined by the amount of money. The larger it is, the longer the painting session will be. The estimate therefore depends on the bids but ranges from 100,000 dollars to 1.7 million.
Additionally, a drawing from the pioneering A.I. program AARON by Harold Cohen is being auctioned. The model was operational from the 1960s to the 2000s. Present is Refik Anadol (1985, Istanbul), a Turkish-American multimedia artist, with Machine Hallucinations. Anadol is the creator of the video mapping intervention on the façade of Casa Batlló in Barcelona and its interior spaces.
It now raises the question of whether the auction will take place or be stopped by its opponents.
She has collaborated for many years with art magazines such as Artribune, XIBT Contemporary, ArtApp, Insideart and Espoarte, preferring contemporary art in its many facets and media drifts.
