Can an algorithm produce art?

The Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, pictured, was created by the French collective Obvious via artificial intelligence (AI) software this week at Christie’s in New York.

The question is: is a canvas created by AI software a work of art?

The enthusiasm aroused on Thursday by the first auction of an array created by algorithm – auctioned at $432 500 (R6.4 million) – feeds the debate more than ever.

The painting exploded the estimate of Christie’s house, which had put the cursor between $7 000 and $10 000.

The name of the buyer, who participated in the sale by phone, was not revealed. Two other people bid unsuccessfully, one being an online buyer from France, the other in the room in New York, according to Christie’s.

From a distance, the canvas, in its gilded frame, looks like many portraits of the 18th or 19th century, with a man represented by three quarters, in black jacket and white collar.

Up close, the man is intriguing: face blurred, unfinished, with for any signature, bottom right, a mathematical formula.

Pierre Fautrel, one of the three members of Obvious, explained before the sale that the portrait was designed with the aim of democratising creation via AI.

To make this painting, Fautrel said he had to feed a software of 15 000 classic portraits, from the 14th to the 20th century.

According to Fautrel, the software Obvious used has learned to “understand the rules of portraiture”. And thanks to a new type of algorithm developed by a Google researcher, Ian Goodfellow, Fautrel then generated a series of new images himself. – AFP