AI-created artworks go up for auction in New York

New York, Nov. 13: Two paintings up for auction in New York highlight a growing interest in artificial intelligence-created works — a technique that could transform how art is made and viewed but is also stirring up passionate debate.

The art world was stunned last year when an AI painting sold for $432,500, and auctioneers are keen to further test demand for computer-generated works.

“Art is a true reflection of what our society, what our environment responds to,” said Max Moore of Sotheby's.

“And so it's just a natural continuation of the progression of art,” he added.

Sotheby’s will put two paintings by the French art collective Obvious up for sale on

Thursday, including “Le Baron De Belamy.” The European classic style portrait is part of the same series as “Portrait of Edmond Belamy”, which sold for more than 60 times the lowest estimate at Christie's during the 2018 fall auctions.

The paintings were made using a technique called “generative adversarial network,” or GAN.

GAN involves feeding thousands of images of the same style into a computer until the machine concludes that it has created a new portrait that it thinks accurately reflects that style.

“Katsuwaka of the Dawn Lagoon” was created in a Japanese style using the same GAN algorithm.

Auctioneers have put modest prices on the two paintings. “Katsuwaka” has a presale estimate between $8,000 and $12,000, while “Le Baron” has been priced between $20,000 and $30,000.

“We do not expect as big a result as last year,” said Pierre Fautrel, one of the three members of Obvious. “We just want to see if there are people who are ready to buy around these prices and if the market will continue to build,” he added.

Moore said the sale of “Portrait of Edmond Belamy” showed that there is “a marketplace for this new body of work” but that it's still “in the very early stages.” “That will be a good indicator of where the market is,” he said.