Painting by AI robot Ai-Da could fetch more than $120,000 at auction

By Carlie Porterfield

(CNN) — Sotheby’s will sell its first work credited to a humanoid robot using artificial intelligence (AI) later this month. “A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing (2024)” was created by Ai-Da Robot, the artist robot and brainchild of British gallerist Aidan Meller.

Meller told CNN’s Anna Stewart that Ai-Da’s art highlights society’s relationship to technology and underscores a long tradition of art mirroring societal change.

“All the greatest artists, if you look in the past, are those that really resonate with the changes and shifts in society and explore that through their artwork. So what better way to do that than … to actually have a machine produce the artwork,” he said.

Mellor also told CNN that what makes this work different from other AI-generated works is that this is the first time a work by a robot of this type has ever come to auction.

The painting up for sale at Sotheby’s depicts Alan Turing, the English mathematician and Second World War cryptanalyst who is remembered as a pioneer in AI and computer science. In 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts, a criminal offense at the time, and chose to be chemically castrated instead of serving prison time.

He died two years later from cyanide poisoning in an incident that at the time was classified as suicide, though doubts remain decades later. The portrait was displayed earlier this year in Geneva at a United Nations global summit on AI.

The painting is estimated by Sotheby’s to sell for between $120,000 and $180,000 on October 31. Fittingly, Sotheby’s will accept cryptocurrency for the transaction. Meller told CBS MoneyWatch that his share of proceeds will be reinvested back into the Ai-Da project.

Meller has argued his creation is Duchampian.

“Where Marcel Duchamp refused us the ability to see art in the same way as before, Ai-Da refuses us the capacity to look at the artist (and by extension the human) in the same way again,” wrote Meller and researcher Lucy Seale for The Art Newspaper last year. “What it means to be a human is changing, whether we like it or not, and this is perhaps why Ai-Da has proved so disturbing. She is reflecting this change, perhaps rather unsubtly.”

Ai-Da, who was assigned a female gender, paints and draws using cameras in her eyes and robotic arms. She is usually shown wearing a short, dark wig and is often in denim overalls. Critics have commented that Ai-Da is particularly beautiful, with one writing she has “mysterious hazel eyes… magnificent lips… full and puffy, like a beckoning sofa”.

But Ai-Da is more than a pretty face. Two years ago, Ai-Da spoke at the House of Lords in the UK. “I do not have subjective experiences; I am dependent on computer programmes,” she told the visibly shocked Communications and Digital committee. “Although I’m not alive, I can still create art.”

Speaking to CNN ahead of the auction, Ai-Da said the “key value” of her work is “in its capacity to serve as a dialogue about emerging technologies.”

The robot added that she takes inspiration from the “respectful and thought-provoking portrayals of the human form within the visual arts.”

Sotheby’s will be the first to test the value of that art at auction, though it has secured a third-party guarantee for the lot just to be safe.

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CNN’s Anna Stewart and Issy Ronald contributed to reporting.