A portrait of English mathematician Alan Turing has become the first artwork by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction, fetching US$1.08m (£566,000, A$1.63m) in New York on Thursday.
The 2.2 metre (7.5 feet) portrait, titled A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing, was created by Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist. It smashed pre-sale expectations between $120,000 and $180,000 when it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s, which confirmed that 27 bids were placed on the work.
Mathematician Turing was a pioneer of computer science and known as the father of artificial intelligence (AI).
The auction house said the historic sale "launches a new frontier in the global art market, establishing the auction benchmark for an artwork by a humanoid robot".
“Today’s record-breaking sale price for the first artwork by a humanoid robot artist to go up for auction marks a moment in the history of modern and contemporary art and reflects the growing intersection between AI technology and the global art market,”
the auction house said in a statement.
Ai-Da is named after Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer and was devised by Aidan Meller, a specialist in modern and contemporary art.
"The greatest artists in history grappled with their period of time, and both celebrated and questioned society's shifts,"
said Meller.
"Ai-Da Robot as technology, is the perfect artist today to discuss the current developments with technology and its unfolding legacy," he added.
Ai-Da generates ideas through conversations with members of the studio, and suggested creating an image of Turing during a discussion about "A.I. for good".
The robot was then asked what style, colour, content, tone and texture to use, before using cameras in its eyes to look at a picture of Turing and create the painting.
Meller led the team that created Ai-Da with artificial intelligence specialists at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham in England.
Ai-Da was created in early 2019. Since then, the robot artist’s work has been shown at exhibitions around the world. She is able to speak at length about the intersection of art and technology: In 2022, she became the first robot to appear before the British Parliament, where she answered questions from the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee.
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