$ 432,500 bid: this painting generated an algorithm

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Thursday, October 25, 2018

On the taste can be discussed, no doubt. But the artistic finesse does not really matter in the portrait "Edmond de Belamy". After all, it was created by Artificial Intelligence – and that comes at a price.

At Christie's in New York, for the first time, a work of art has gone under the hammer, not painted by a human, but by an algorithm. The portrait "Edmond de Belamy" marks with 432 500 dollars (380 500 euros) an unexpected price. The gilded picture shows a man dressed in black and could, at first sight, date from the 18th or 19th century.

But looking closer, the features of the person's face are fuzzy and large areas on the edges of the painting are not painted. Instead of the artist's signature, there is a mathematical formula at the bottom right: "min G max D Ex[log(D(x))]+ Ez[log(1-D(G(z)))]"This refers to the algorithm that produced the work.

"Edmond Belamy" is the idea of ​​the collective of French artists Avoid, who wants to democratize art by artificial intelligence (AI). The artist Pierre Fautrel initially introduced 15,000 clbadic portraits into a computer system. From there, the computer automatically generated a series of new images using an algorithm. Among them, the collective has selected eleven, the so-called "Belamy family", to which also belongs the photo auction. The name of the artificial community is strong enough in the French translation of "Goodfellow" and is inspired by artificial intelligence researcher Ian Goodfellow.

Christie's initial estimate was between $ 7,000 and $ 10,000. All do not hold the painting for the art. But for the fautrel aged 25, there is no doubt: "Even if the algorithm creates the image, we are the ones who decided to print it on the web, sign it with a mathematical formula and it give a golden frame to miss. "

Source: n-tv.de