A Robot Artist Just Made More Money Than You Have in Your Entire Creative Career

We’ve reached the next level of AI creativity and commerce

First, we prompted a computer screen to create art based on human creations. Now, it’s an actual robot doing the painting.

That’s right — an “ultra-realistic robot artist” has been trained to actually paint on canvas. Its depiction of the late computer scientist Alan Turing recently fetched $1.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction.

As IFLScience reports, the robot — named Ai-Da after Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and computing pioneer — chose the subject of its painting after conversing with humans through a language model. Then it used its robot arm to sketch out and then paint several versions of Turing.

The source says each oil/acrylic painting of the finished series took roughly six to eight hours to complete by the robot “artist.” Ai-Da originally created 15 paintings, narrowed down to the end product by the artificial creator, “applied to a large canvas using a 3D textured printer.”

Artificial art, real money

The “art” called A.I. God garnered about 10 times what it was expected to sell for at auction, won by an anonymous buyer.

Chances are $1.3 million is more than you’ve made from your own art, assuming you’re not a dead art icon. We know that the art humans buy from late legends often goes for millions, even if the artist was struggling financially while alive.

This is not the first time we’ve seen digital art go for a ridiculous sum at auction.

In 2018, a French collective earned $432,500 at Christie’s for an AI portrait art called Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy.

Later, an artist named Mike Winkelmann that goes by “Beeple” sold a digital NFT (remember those?) for $69 million at Christie’s, which placed him among the most valuable living artists. The Verge explains that up until that breakthrough sale, the most he earned from a print was $100.

But this is the first time a robot in human-like form devised a concept and physically applied paint to canvas.

Of course, Ai-Da doesn’t keep the money — so far, robots don’t have a need to use currency. Its human creators benefit financially from the sale.

Human input is still needed (for now)

Aidan Meller, an art dealer and gallery director, is the lead of the Ai-Da Robot Project. IFLScience says the actual robot was built by Engineered Arts, the UK robotics collective behind Ameca, which is also eerily humanoid.

Keep in mind, it still took humans to prompt the robot. Meller said there was an initial discussion with Ai-Da about depicting “A.I. for good.” There was also a discussion about how to approach the painting in terms of style and texture.

“It was programmed internationally, with her AI capabilities being developed by PhD students and professors at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham,” notes the site regarding Ai-Da. It adds that human assistants helped prepare the printed canvas, but the robot was largely responsible for the completed product.

Here’s a video of Ai-Da explaining the artistic “process”:

The Guardian says the somewhat abstract style of the portraits might’ve been intentional:

The artwork’s ‘muted tones and broken facial planes’ seemingly suggested ‘the struggles Turing warned we will face when it comes to managing AI’, Meller said.

Turing was right. The emergence of AI in writing and art has taken the world by storm, emerging just a few years ago. Now we’re already at the point where a robot can command more than a million dollars for its concepts.

Challenging the definition of art

But it’s about more than money. This art further challenges what art actually is, and whether one needs to have human consciousness in order to create impact.

The humans behind this project consider Ai-Da itself to be “conceptual art.” While the robot is obviously not human, there are other projects in the works that could soon create realistic-looking artists with actual living skin.

Who knows, you might soon be talking to a fellow artist at a life drawing class, complimenting their technique, not realizing you’re conversing with a robot.

What are your thoughts on all of this? Are you impressed, creeped out, or concerned for your artistic future?