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AI Artwork Auction

AI Artwork Auction

Part of a series on AI Art. [View Related Entries]

Updated Oct 30, 2018 at 12:41PM EDT by Adam.

Added Oct 30, 2018 at 11:46AM EDT by Adam.

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Overview

AI Artwork Auction refers to the sale of the painting "Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy," which was generated by Artificial Intelligence and sold at auction for $432,500. The sale led to a debate online as to who was responsible for the artwork, as the art collective Obvious produced the piece but used at least a modified version of the code created by another programmer to make it.

Background

On October 25th, 2018, an AI-generated painting titled "Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy," sold for $432,500 from auction house Christie's.[1] The piece was was generated by French art collective Obvious.


Christie's @Christiesinc Follow #AuctionUpdate The first Al artwork to be sold in a major auction achieves $432,500 after a bidding battle on the phones and via ChristiesLive bit.ly/2PVN2ly 12:22 PM-25 Oct 2018

Developments

Prior to the the painting being sold, programmer Robbie Barrat posted very similar artworks code he created generated, tweeting "Does anyone else care about this? Am I crazy for thinking that they really just used my network and are selling the results?"


Robbie Barrat @DrBeef Follow left: the "Al generated" portrait Christie's is auctioning off right now right: outputs from a neural networkl trained and put online over a year ago". Does anyone else care about this? Am lI crazy for thinking that they really just used my network and are selling the results? 11:31 PM-24 Oct 2018

Days prior to the auction, The Verge[2] covered the auction and Barrat's claim to the code which created "Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy." The Verge explains the history of how AI-generated art was created and how Barrat generated and shared a code on GitHub to help other AI-artists create art. The Obvious collective used the code to create the painting which sold at Christie's. Speaking to The Verge, Hugo Caselles-Dupré, the tech lead for Obvious, admitted that Obvious used Barrat's code but tweaked it to fit the collective's taste. Other AI artists say in the piece that the work done in the "Belamy" painting was "probably 90 percent… done by [Barrat].”

After the painting sold, Obvious responded to criticisms by posting direct messages they shared with Barrat in which Barrat gave them permission to use the code (shown below).


Obvious obv_ious Follow Replying to @obv ious @DrBeef A discussion we had on April. Why am I writing you this message it to make clear that we made use of some code of yours on github, and I want to check that you are okay with it. We think we owe you that. We do not want you to think that we stole your work or anything like that. We were inspired by your work to create our collection. This collection was made to support our artistic approach which is to democratize ML algorithms to artists and raise the question of creativity among machines, and of course finance our research on art and ML Let me know if you are okay with that. Moreover, if you are interested our approach in any way, we would love to discuss with you on our experience in proposing Al created artworks to the art world. Similarty, we are very interested in discussing with you about your experience on this topic. Have a good day ) Hey, Yeah-I'm 100% okay with it; sounds like interesting work and I'm glad that you found some of my code useful. You don't owe me any credit or anything. Really sorry I never got around to doing the Keras rewrite of art- dcgan; I've been horribly busy between work and other more recent projects. I remember you really wanted that; sorry l 7 avr but yeah -I'd love to talk with you about Al and art sometime - sounds like the work you're doing is interesting and would like to hear more about it Envoyer

Others came to Obvious' defense, as Barrat made the code open on GitHub, making legal routes for Barrat limited. Barrat iterated to Daily Dot[3] that he did not want to take legal action against Obvious, saying "My main concern is just that actual artists working with AI get more recognition, and don’t get shadowed over by this collective of marketers and their recent sale."


twiterated prisoner's dilemma @sneakdotberlin Follow v Replying to @iamacyborg @obv_ious @DrBeef when you post code on github and someone else runs it and prints the output and sells it to someone, nobody has stolen from you. 4:50 PM-25 Oct 2018 AC Marcus Lyall Follow @lyallmarcus Replying to @DrBeef@nollidruj @Christieslnc @Christieslnc have made their cut. Opensource means Free to use so legal routes limited IMO. Art peeps will claim some added value / narrative on top of what you released. Keep making good stuff instead. 7:23 AM-25 Oct 2018

Search Interest

External References

[1] Twitter – ChristiesInc

[2] The Verge – HOW THREE FRENCH STUDENTS USED BORROWED CODE TO PUT THE FIRST AI PORTRAIT IN CHRISTIE’S

[3] Daily Dot – Drama ensues over first-ever AI-created artwork sold in a major auction--and its $432,500 grab

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in reply to poochyena

I'd say there's a distinction here between tools and AI.

If I write a novel on MS Word, Microsoft does not own copyright to that text because the creative act was mine. Word was merely a tool.

In this case, the AI is a participant in the creative act itself, not merely in the creation of a concrete representation. The AI's creator should therefore receive credit, and in some cases at least part of the procedes from the sale of the works the AI produces.

That being said, there is an ambiguity here regarding how much credit the Collective should have. There's a history of procedural and algorithmic art that pre-dates advanced AI, such as what the Oulipo group produced. Typically, if I write a poem using one of Oulipo's methods I nevertheless keep credit for the work. The setting of initial conditions and, more importantly, the selection of which results to publish and which to not, remain major creative interventions. The art collective did, after all, choose to publish THIS result and not some other one, which can be compared to an author selecting one draft as the "final" draft over its predecessors.

The courts need to do a lot of work to figure out how credit and revenue should be divided up. I don't think the Obvious collective's behaviour should be a model for "best practices" here, though their role in the painting's creation should not be trivialized.

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