Christie’s AI art auction inspires protests – and more art
A MARTÃNEZ, HOST:
Thousands of artists are asking a major auction house to cancel a sale of AI art. NPR's Chloe Veltman reports Christie's is not budging.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: Big auction houses have dabbled with AI art in the past. In 2018, Christie's sold a blurry painting of a male figure made with generative artificial intelligence that was trained on thousands of historic portraits for more than $400,000. And last year, a painting created by an AI robot artist named Ai-Da went for more than $1 million at Sotheby's. Here's Ai-Da describing what her work represents on YouTube.
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AI-DA: Towards a post-human world, where algorithms make many of the decisions.
VELTMAN: But Christie's upcoming sale may be the first time a major auction house is focusing entirely on works created using machine learning. And that's upsetting to many artists, such as Karla Ortiz. She's a plaintiff in an ongoing class action copyright infringement lawsuit against several image-based AI companies.
KARLA ORTIZ: Christie's just doesn't care about artists. They just want to make money.
VELTMAN: Ortiz was one of the first people to sign an online letter asking Christie's to cancel the sale, alleging that many of the auction's 34 artworks were created using AI models that could have been trained on unlicensed, copyrighted work.
ORTIZ: Christie's is an institution. It's a household name, and for them to be holding the show basically normalizes what I consider theft.
NICOLE SALES GILES: AI is learning everything it possibly can from an entire set of data and images, to then create something new. That's influence, not theft.
VELTMAN: Nicole Sales Giles is the director of digital art at Christie's. She says copyright issues arising from how the commercial AI models were trained are beyond the auction house's purview. And the demand for AI art is growing. Analysts predict it will be worth nearly $1 billion in 2028. Giles says Christie's has no intention of canceling the upcoming sale, but she welcomes the voices of dissent.
GILES: We are excited that a sale is sparking such passionate conversation around art. This is what art should be doing.
VELTMAN: The letter has inspired more artists to comment on the fraught relationship between art and commerce. The digital artist Beeple posted an artwork in response on social media titled "The War Of Art." It depicts a giant, shiny robot aggressively correcting the letter with red ink, as he holds a leash attached at the other end to a tiny human. Chloe Veltman, NPR News.
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