2025-03-01
The response to the ongoing ‘Augmented Intelligence’ auction at Christie's has been primarily negative. Even before it started, on 20 February, an online petition to cancel the event gained thousands of signatures. However, it proved unsuccessful – the auction continues and will end as planned on 5 March.
While the discussion on the ethics of AI is nothing new, it seems to have stalled. In an age of democratisation of both the fine arts and access to knowledge, it is difficult to find agreement between supporters of AI in the arts and those demanding compensation from the tech giants.
If you are picturing primarily NFT-style serial portraits, you would be mistaken. It is worth noting that there are 34 items up for auction, actually a minority of which are natively digital.
Christie's has put together a sort of cross-section of the history of algorithmic art. The catalogue opens with a 1987 drawing by Harold Cohen, an artist who had already been using early artificial intelligence in his work since the 1960s. The wide time span and the diversity in terms of form and technology seem to be an attempt to give a nod to the creativity of the selected artists.
Nevertheless, we are left with questions about the ethical aspects of the use of AI. Even if we consider that a work created with its help, sold in a reputable auction house, has the right to exist and be traded on the art market on a par with Cézanne's paintings, it is hard for us to ignore the voices of other artists in, for example, the conceptual illustration industry, who have suffered as a result of the development of the same technology.