Christie's: Criticism of the first auction for "AI art" without exception
In a few days, Christie's will begin an auction for "AI art", which the traditional house calls "groundbreaking". Thousands of artists see it differently.
Some of the works of art
(Image: Christie's)
After the long-established auction house Christie's announced the first auction exclusively for AI art, criticism of the auction is mounting. In an open letter, almost 3,000 artists have called for the auction to be canceled. They point out that many of the generative AI tools used to create the artworks were trained with copyrighted works without having acquired a license for them. If those responsible for the AI technologies are supported by institutions such as Christie's, this would only create further incentives to "mass steal" art created by humans.
Christie's announced the auction called"Augmented Intelligence" last week; it will be held online from February 20 to March 5. The art offered for auction was not created exclusively with the generative AI tools that have only recently become available, but algorithms are said to have played a part in the creation of all of them. Those responsible assure us that they do not see AI as a replacement for human creativity, but rather as a way of enhancing it. "AI technology is undoubtedly the future," says Nicole Sales Giles, who is responsible for digital art at the auction house.
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Critics, on the other hand, say that many of the AI models used to create the works and the companies responsible for them are exploiting artists. In order to train the models, works of art were used without permission or payment, with the aim of competing with the artists.
Christie's refuted the criticism to TechCrunch and assured that AI was only used to improve the artworks. Furthermore, it was only trained with the company's own works. In an accompanying article, however, the house mentions the AI tools Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, for which this does not apply.
(mho)
