A well-oiled machine: picture made by AI to sell at auction
A PORTRAIT created by a computer is to be sold at Christie’s in New York, marking the first time a leading auction house has handled art made by artificial intelligence.
The “painting” of a fictional man, who has been named Edmond Belamy, is the work of a Paris-based trio of 25-year-olds, who are making a name for themselves with their pioneering computer-generated art.
Gauthier Vernier, one of the three co-founders of the Obvious art collective, laughed when asked if they intended to put artists out of business.
“There is enough space for us all,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“We see this as a new branch of art, in the same way as photography was in the 1800s. We’re a new generation of creatives but we certainly won’t replace other innovative artists.”
The three men, who live together in a flat in Paris, met at university – Pierre Fautrel and Mr Vernier studying business, and their colleague Hugo Caselles-dupré studying technology.
For the past year, intrigued by the potential of technology and fascinated by art history, they have worked on a system to harness AI and make art.
They begin by feeding a data set of 15,000 portraits, painted between the 14th and 20th centuries, into a computer system they call the generator.
This system then attempts to produce a unique piece of printed artwork based on its learning. The image looks like a painting, with visible brush strokes, but with a hint of the abstract. A second system, known as the discriminator, then tries to spot the difference between a man-made image and the one created by the generator.
“The aim is to fool the discriminator into thinking that the new images are real-life portraits,” said Mr Casellesdupré. “Then we have a result.”
The end products are unique, thanks to a “very important” randomisation feature in the coding, the trio said.
So far they have created 11 portraits, and their work has been championed by Nicolas Laugero Lasserre, a celebrated art professor known for his collection of urban art by the likes of Shepard Fairey, Invader and Banksy.
In February he bought his first work from Obvious, paying €10,000 (£9,000) for a piece which now hangs in the Paris art gallery Art 42.
“I just find it amazing that some young people built a programme allowing the creation of an original artwork, based on a selection of the ‘bests’ from past art history,” Mr Laugero Lasserre told Artnet News. He said the innovation was “grotesque and amazing at the same time”.
The French trio say they owe Mr Laugero Lasserre a huge debt of gratitude, admitting that they struggled at first to be taken seriously.
“At the beginning a lot of people were like, ‘Who are these guys? What are they doing?’” said Mr Fautrel. “But now we are considered true artists.”
They were stunned when a representative from Christie’s rang, to say it wanted to include the portrait in its sale, in what the auction house says “will signal the arrival of AI art on the world auction stage”.
“That was definitely a good day,” Mr Vernier said.
The portrait, with a top estimated value of $10,000 (£7,000) will be included in the Prints & Multiples sale in October. Lindsay Griffith, who is managing the sale, said the auction house was “interested in opening the dialogue about new technology”.
“At the moment, managing those tools requires rare skills and expensive technology,” she said.
“But we can imagine that tomorrow these tools will be widely spread across the population.”
‘This innovation is grotesque and amazing at the same time’