Christie’s to hold first auction devoted solely to AI art, amid pushback

Fine-arts auction house Christie’s is set to launch “Augmented Intelligence,” its first auction devoted entirely to art created with the help of AI, Report informs via Forbes.

The auction will run from Feb. 20 through March 5, with a concurrent exhibit at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries in New York. “Augmented Intelligence” will feature more than 20 lots — from digital art to sculptures, acrylic and oil paintings and inks on paper.

“AI technology is undoubtedly the future, and its connection to creativity will become increasingly important,” Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s director of digital art, said in a Friday statement announcing the auction. Christie’s has sold AI art before but hasn’t focused an entire auction on it until now.

“Augmented Intelligence” will include works by early pioneers of algorithmic art and prominent contemporary digital artists such as Refik Anadol, who used AI to interpret and transform more than 200 works from New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Anadol also co-founded Dataland, an L.A. venue billed as the first museum of A.I. arts and scheduled to open later this year. His piece in the Christie’s auction comes from “Machine Hallucinations,” an otherworldly series of “AI data paintings” made with an AI model trained on a set of curated images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.