Titled ‘AI God,’ the artwork surpassed its estimated value of $120,000 to $140,000.
Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana artwork, Jeff Koon’s “Balloon Dog” sculpture, and Cy Tombly’s scribble work “Untitled” — these are just some of the most bizarre art pieces that sold for a fortune in the past decades.
They certainly shocked many people, especially on the internet. Just last week, another art piece was seemingly added to the world’s “ridiculous list” — not because it looks odd but because it was a humanoid robot that painted it.
Titled AI God by the popular AI robot Ai-Da, it was sold for a whopping $1.08 million (P63.3 million) at an auction in New York on November 8. It was marketed as part of famed auction house Sotheby’s Digital Art Sale and was estimated to fetch between $120,000 to $140,000. It was sold to an anonymous buyer for a million dollars after 27 bids were placed on the work.
AI God features renowned English scientist, mathematician, and WWII Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing. Turing was considered a founding father of artificial intelligence, having developed the first modern computers, and the Turing Test, which studies how machines interact with humans.
Meanwhile, Ai-Da is a humanoid robot artist built by British gallerist Aidan Meller along with robot manufacturer Engineered Arts and the University of Oxford in 2019. According to Mashable, the bot has cameras for eyes, a pair of robotic arms, and speaks using an AI language model.
Meller said that it was the bot who decided the subject for its million-dollar artwork following discussions with him and their team. “We converse with Ai-Da, using her AI language model, about what she would like to paint,” he said in a press statement. “In this instance, we had a discussion with her about ‘AI for good’ which led to Ai-Da bringing up Alan Turing as a key person in the history of AI that she wanted to paint.”
They then showed a picture and several paintings of Turing for the bot to study, and its algorithm decided on the texture, tone, and color to use. Meller explained, “Ai-Da uses the cameras in her eyes to look at a picture of Alain Turing alongside her AI drawing and painting algorithms and her robotic arm to create preliminary sketches.”
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Like any generative AI tool, Ai-Da replicates the styles of existing art for those of her own. Sotheby’s said that for this instance, the robot artist was “inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios, works that portray human suffering through splintered, distorted aesthetics.”
Meller said that Ai-Da’s robotic arm is “unable to stretch to a large scale canvas and is limited to A3 size canvas.” That is why human assistants assembled the finished artwork but with guidance from the bot.
“There is no change in the underlying image in this process. Ai-Da then adds marks and texture onto the final canvas in order to complete the artwork. The positioning and color of these marks were decided by Ai-Da based on having a conversation about what she wants to do,” Meller said.
This is not the first time that Ai-Da’s AI God was shown to the public. It was first displayed at the United Nations AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva last May. Prior to this, the bot held its solo show “Leaping into the Metaverse” at the Venice Biennale in 2022. It also had exhibits in several festivals and museums, including the London Design Biennale and London Design Festival.
Ai-Da said that its million-dollar art piece, AI God, aims to catalyze “dialogue about emerging technologies” as well as “invite viewers to reflect on the god-like nature of AI and computing while considering the ethical and societal implications of these advancements.”
“Alain Turing recognized this potential and stares at us as we race towards the future,” the bot concluded.
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