Ignoring Protests, Christie's Holds AI Art Auction, Makes Big Money (cnet.com)
- Reference: 0176655005
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/0132251/ignoring-protests-christies-holds-ai-art-auction-makes-big-money
- Source link: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/christies-first-ever-ai-art-auction-earns-728000-plus-controversy/
"These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies' mass theft of human artists' work." CNET reports that the signers " [2]range from illustrators to authors to art therapists to cinematographers, from countries all across the globe."
Christie's ignored them all and held the auction anyways. So what happened when it was over on Wednesday morning?
> More than 30 lots attracted hundreds of bids and brought in $728,784, Christie's reports. And there's a generational twist: The auction house says 37% of registrants were completely new to Christie's, and 48% of bidders were millennials or members of Gen Z... The highest price in the sale was $277,200 for a work by Refik Anadol titled Machine Hallucinations — ISS Dreams — A. It used a data set of more than 1.2 million images taken from the International Space Station and satellites.
[3]ARTnews reports that the auction actually brought in more than Christie's had expected:
> The sale, which made up of 34 lots, had an 82 percent sell through rate... While some digital artists, [4]including Beeple , championed the sale, others decried it as emblematic of the ongoing struggle between human artistry and machine-driven innovation. The results, however, suggest that AI art — controversial as it may be — is carving a firm place in the market.
[1] https://openletter.earth/cancel-the-christies-ai-art-auction-f5135435?limit=0
[2] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/christies-first-ever-ai-art-auction-earns-728000-plus-controversy/
[3] https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/christies-ai-art-sale-augmented-intelligence-controversy-surpasses-expectations-1234734870/
[4] https://x.com/beeple/status/1888432046353051752?s=46
Those auctions... (Score:5, Insightful)
...are not about art. They're about money laundering and tax avoidance
Re: (Score:2)
Your comment is underrated and 100% correct. Also, "37% new to Christie's" - I'm sure. Scammers gotta get in and start overheating the "value".
Re: (Score:2)
Probably the same people who buy EFTs.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Yes. They are also an indication that taxes are way too low.
Re: Those auctions... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a bizarre take. Other comments suggest that this is largely money lsindeting and tax *evasion*. Perhaps taxes are too *high*, if people need to go to such extremes to evade them.
Regardless, if you want to see rich people parted from their money, you should like seeing them hand it out for collections of bits
AI-generated art is plagarism (Score:2)
It's patently obvious the AI is trained on other peoples art. Regardless on how much it rearranges it. Other people's work and without compensating them
Re: (Score:2)
Not all of the art was trained on other people's art. The article makes that clear.
Re: (Score:2)
So a system that is loosely based on the human brain can be trained by viewing a bunch of content and then can create variations based upon what it learned and that is a violation? So much "creative" work by humans is just variations on things they learned from. You can change 20% and be safe... but if an AI does the same thing and changes 50% ... that is illegal?
Can I ban you from looking at my publically available art because you might study it can get too inspired? if you buy the art and then learn from
Re: (Score:2)
> It's patently obvious the AI is trained on other peoples art. Regardless on how much it rearranges it. Other people's work and without compensating them
I think, if you look at the way art historically develops, not all AI generated art is plagiarism. If you use AI to essentially copy someone’s art with minor changes so that a comparison of the AI art and the artists works is basically undistinguishable, then yes it is. However, artists have long used others works as inspiration and created similar styled works, interpreting the artists who have gone before in new ways. In that sense, AI is just adding its own interpretation of the works and is not
Re: (Score:2)
It's also patently obvious that artists are trained on other people's art. I play in a band, we write our own stuff. Our influences, and who we sound like are the subject of polite conversation, not vitriolic arguments and accusations of "theft".
Re: AI-generated art is plagarism (Score:1)
And none if the complainants ever studied art or even a cave drawing, they just produce all their own art works with pure divine inspiration .
Re: (Score:2)
It's patently obvious the AI is trained on other peoples art.
Yes; most AI services will have trained on other peoples' images and learned to emulate the result of a process. That does not mean it is plagiarism. It's a generally not well-formed and baseless claim to suggest "AI usage is plagiarism".
Regardless on how much it rearranges it.
AI does not "rearrange" other peoples' work. Various generative AI models are developed and learn from others' work to develop the equivalent of a mathematical funct
art therapist? (Score:1)
wtf is that?
Old masters (Score:1)
And none of these holy complainers studied the old masters, right?
Sucker art will eventually go away - market forces (Score:2)
I think we can expect more fuss and brouhaha over stuff like this for awhile, while Christie's and a few artists make money while they can off of the few people with more money than taste.
But, I think auctions with this (mostly low) caliber of art will be evanescent as artists, buyers, and public get more sophisticated or jaded as fascination-with-the-new wears off.
This stuff is too simple to make, so "the market" will get flooded with junk, and as the novelty wears off, people will get more sophisticated.
I
Sea beams (Score:3)
It's not just generated art, there is definitely some creativity added. The most expensive piece [1]ISS Dreams [refikanadol.com] is pretty good, although I wouldn't pay $200k for it, there is a hypnotic feel and I'm not the target audience, but I would pay to see it in a museum.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain; sea-beams glitter in the dark light that burns twice as bright burns and burns.
[1] https://refikanadol.com/works/machinehallucinations-iss/
Re: (Score:2)
I liked it too.
I believe the "anti-AI art" movement is mostly emotional.
Re: (Score:2)
AI tends to evoke a good bit of negative emotions in people.
I think it makes them feel insecure. They seem to posture and puff their chest out at it. Denigrate it irrationally.
Not to say there aren't negative things about it or anything like that- just that seems to cause a certain subset of people to immediately start foaming at the mouth.
Re: (Score:2)
Ya, that's pretty fucking cool.
Re: (Score:2)
Christie's is really good at sales. That's what they are, high-end salespeople.
Now someone else owns it, and you don't.