Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k • Hacker News Board

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#31

Post by reitzensteinm » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

timClicks wrote: post #10

Zero2Ten wrote: post #2

This could be something great if the author of the original algorithm and datasets was given proper credits. https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055360024548012033

I think that people don't seem to understand that most open source licences don't require attribution. If you have released your code according to a licence, what right do you have to complain that people are using that code in accordance with that licence? In this case though, it looks like Obvious did set out to attribute the original GAN author and Christie's have omitted that.

Next time you leave your headlights on and someone helps you jump start, remember that you're not legally obligated to thank him or her. Most people don't seem to understand this.

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#32

Post by erwan » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:26 PM UTC

I have sympathy for the author's frustration but they open-sourced their work under a very permissive license.

It sounds comical that suddenly something becomes valuable because you hang it in a gold frame, make minor modifications to it and ascribe it some symbolism. But that is exactly how contemporary artworks are done.

If you go to exhibits and auctions, it is not uncommon to see highly valued work that requires little sophistication to produce. The days you would woo the art world by technical mastery alone are (mostly) over. This story fits in the greater trend and there might be a bit of a culture clash.

I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional works. Whether it is for better or worse, I will leave you judge of that.

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#33

Post by mattnewton » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:31 PM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #16

The results are so amateurish though. What’s with those nasty deconvolution artifacts?

How will you know a computer did it and not an amateur unless it looks crappy in a very specific way?

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#34

Post by mattnewton » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:32 PM UTC

everdev wrote: post #5

I could see someone paying for the novelty of one of the first well-known AI paintings, but I can imagine supply and demand economics will drive prices way down as more high quality AI art floods the market. Good time to get in though while supply is still low and demand is high.

Is this even good quality? I imagine this is just the novelty.. and even that is quesionable to me.

The real feat for me isn’t in using this open source model to generate this painting, it seems to be convincing anyone that this was worth $432k

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#35

Post by Raphmedia » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:37 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #18

Color me extremely unimpressed. I just can't believe someone would pay that much for something... so visually mediocre. When you look at how GANs work, they are incredible for what they are (especially StackGAN / GANs conditioned on some input)... but I just don't think there's any real creativity - or for that matter, intelligence - in GANs yet.

It's one of the first work of art by an AI. Think of how much this fact alone will increase the price of the painting in 200 years.

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#36

Post by _2d30 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:41 PM UTC

erwan wrote: post #32

I have sympathy for the author's frustration but they open-sourced their work under a very permissive license. It sounds comical that suddenly something becomes valuable because you hang it in a gold frame, make minor modifications to it and ascribe it some symbolism. But that is exactly how contemporary artworks are done. If you go to exhibits and auctions, it is not uncommon to see highly valued work that requires…

> I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional works.

I really like your framing of this and agree wholeheartedly. I think it really comes from contemporary art’s focus on abstraction and meaning within context. The combination of focus on abstraction and meaning while requiring the viewer to understand the context in which a work was made makes it very inaccessible to all but those who have the time and knowledge to develop that understanding from. This makes it very inaccessible to general audiences. Alternatively, so often the depth of the meaning/context and the effectiveness of the abstraction are quite underwhelming in reality but overly celebrated by the art world.

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#37

Post by phaedrus » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

OisinMoran wrote: post #9

Twitter thread from the author of the original algorithm: https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073 (worth reading the whole thread, the art collective reply) GitHub link: https://github.com/robbiebarrat/art-dcgan The README was last edited 6 months ago and contains the bolded text: "When using any outputs of the models, credit me. Don't sell the outputs of the pre-trained models, modified or not. If you…

Reminds me of Infiniminer vs Minecraft, or GNU vs Linux. Or, especially, the Box2D creator asking Rovio to credit Box2D in Angry Birds. (Did they ever do so?) It sounds like Obvious at least attempted to give credit, but were ignored by the media.

https://www.geek.com/games/box2d-creator-asks-rovio-for-angr...

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#38

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

OisinMoran wrote: post #9

Twitter thread from the author of the original algorithm: https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073 (worth reading the whole thread, the art collective reply) GitHub link: https://github.com/robbiebarrat/art-dcgan The README was last edited 6 months ago and contains the bolded text: "When using any outputs of the models, credit me. Don't sell the outputs of the pre-trained models, modified or not. If you…

Licenses aren't retroactive. If you don't want people making money off your stuff (yes, even with direct copy-and-pastes), use CC-BY-NC or similar, not the BSD License.

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#39

Post by _pastel » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

This article has by far my favorite explanation of GANs for image generation:

  To generate the image, the algorithm compared its own work to those in the data set until it could not tell them apart.

Amazingly succinct, lay-person friendly, and still pretty accurate.

Re: Christie’s sells its first AI portrait for $432k

#40

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 8:54 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #31

timClicks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people don't seem to understand that most open source licences don't require attribution. If you have released your code according to a licence, what right do you have to complain that people are using that code in accordance with that licence? In this case though, it looks like Obvious did set out to attribute the original GAN author and Christie's have omitted that.

Next time you leave your headlights on and someone helps you jump start, remember that you're not legally obligated to thank him or her. Most people don't seem to understand this.

An appropriate analogy in this case would be someone putting up a sign that explicitly says that nobody has to thank them, then getting mad that nobody thanked them.