Christie's First-Ever AI Art Auction Earns $728,000, Plus Controversy

Artificial intelligence and art have been controversial for years. So it's no surprise that Christie's faced protests over its first-ever AI-dedicated auction, which the auction house says was the first ever from any major auction house, faced protests. In February, more than 5,600 artists signed an open letter asking Christie's to cancel the sale. "Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license," the open letter reads in part. "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." A representative for Christie's shared a statement about the issue. "From the beginning, two things have been true about the art world: one, artists are inspired ... Read full article.