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

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

#121

Post by tedeh »

Pristina wrote: post #115

Imagine yourself writing a javascript library to do some mundane thing then releasing it as GPL and then somebody made a slightly modified copy of it and licenses it to google for 5M a year.

The generally held opinion on this is that that would never work, because Google has no reason to pay 5M a year to something that is available to anyone for free. The keyword is "slightly modified" here which implies that the modification is trivial. If the modifications are not trivial, then all bets are off of course.

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

#122

Post by tlrobinson »

eganist wrote: post #91
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…

Interesting. Considering the readme is the first thing the person sees on the github link and nothing about the license itself precludes other contracts, could the bolded text in this context be considered a verbal contract? Or at least enforceable as such? Edit: Actually, there was a change to the license surrounding pre-trained models and sales back in June, so it's even baked into an obvious contract. A lot of the…

Obvious references "the collection", which presumably includes the piece auctioned at Christies, in a DM to Robbie in April, before that clause was added: https://twitter.com/obv_ious/status/1055352403837497344

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

#126

Post by drb91 »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #8
rhacker wrote: post #3

All I can say is "follow the money"... I can see someone paying for the AI program, but not for one of its digital outputs. I'm guessing this is an internal purchase for the news story.

I doubt this. It is more likely just a very wealthy person wanting to buy the first artwork completely done by an AI that hit a major auction house. That is news, the fact that it is in the news automatically adds to the cache around the piece. That makes for a solid art investment.

The work could have been literally anything so long as it was generated by a computer. The art here is convincing people the algorithm = AI.

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

#127

Post by drb91 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #27
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.

Maybe that's what attracted the buyer, that this is an early work of AI art.

“AI” meaning what exactly? The real work of art here is convincing the buyer this algorithm is meaningful.

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

#128

Post by lultimouomo »

gesman wrote: post #87

It has nothing to do with the object of sale but mostly with the fact that it's Christie's effort. Try to sell identical thing on eBay for $10 and watch the world making fun of you at zero bids.

This.

I don't have much sympathy for the sellers profiting off open source code without apparently any intention of contributing back even a little, but it's clear that the 400k valuation is not a direct outcome of the code quality - after all you can make litteraly millions of painting from the same "author" for bucks each. The 400k come from the marketing skills of the sellers (or, if you're less generous, from the fact that they're probably very well connected to the right people in the art market).

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

#129

Post by ablation »

spongepoc wrote: post #80
blotter_paper wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this screencap posted by Obvious was the most illuminating part of that twitstorm: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqVdWJSW4AAOtXD?format=jpg

If Obvious hadn't been successful with their goals, Robbie would not (and did not) care a bit that his work was being used. It only became contentious when they were able to raise a lot of money. It's funny.

Well, obviously. Robbie said in his Github readme: "When using any outputs of the models, credit me. Don't sell the outputs of the pre-trained models, modified or not. If you have any questions email me before doing anything."

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

#130

Post by breakintheweb »

IshKebab wrote: post #50
bobthepanda wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, isn't art used as a tax dodge these days? That and a giant influx of money from countries that don't historically buy a lot of art (e.g. China)

How exactly would buying art work as a tax dodge?

I know in France, there was a "solidarity tax on wealth" which was a yearly tax on assets over 1.3million euros. Artwork was exempt from this. This changed in the end of last year and I think it's just based on real estate now.
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