• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

AI Robot Artist Strikes Gold By Selling Painting Of Alan Turing For $1.3 Million

November 8, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The “world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist” has sold a portrait of Alan Turing – the codebreaking trailblazer of modern computer science – for over $1 million. The sale marks the first work of art by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction (although, technically, the money will go into the pockets of the robot’s human creator).

The painting, titled “A.I. God”, went under the hammer on Thursday as part of Sotheby’s Digital Art Sale in New York. Predicted to only sell for $120,000 to $180,000, the artwork went to an anonymous buyer for a colossal $1.3 million.

Advertisement

The artist behind the work is Ai-Da, a humanoid robot named after Ada Lovelace, often called the “world’s first computer programmer.” The 19th-century mathematician was one of the first people to recognize the potential of computers to go beyond mere calculation, envisioning their application in music, art, and more.

With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI), Ai-Da analyzes photographs of Alan Turing and processes how it wishes to approach its own artwork. 

“We converse with Ai-Da, using her A.I. language model, about what she would like to paint. In this instance, we had a discussion with her about ‘A.I. for good’ which led to Ai-Da’ bringing up Alan Turing as a key person in the history of A.I. that she wanted to paint,” Aidan Meller, Director of the Ai-Da Robot Project, said in a statement seen by IFLScience.

“We then discuss with Ai-Da how she would like to paint Alan Turing. We ask Ai-Da questions around style, colour, content, tone, texture and so on. Ai-Da then uses the cameras in her eyes to look at a picture of Alan Turing alongside her A.I. drawing and painting algorithms and her robotic arm to create preliminary sketches followed by several paintings of Alan Turing,” explained Meller.

A portrait of Alan Turing created by a humanoid robot and AI called Ai-Da

Someone’s a fan of Francis Bacon: the final “A.I. God” polyptych created by Ai-Da.

Image courtesy of Sotheby’s

It then physically applies acrylic and oil paint onto a canvas, with each painting taking about six to eight hours to complete. For this project, Ai-Da painted 15 individual portraits of Turing’s face. Three of these 15 images were then picked by Ai-Da before being scanned and uploaded onto a computer where the final image was assembled. The end product was then applied to a large canvas using a 3D textured printer.

While much of the process is controlled by Ai-Da, the robot does receive a helping hand from humans.

“Studio assistants then add texture onto the 3D printed canvas of the artwork – this is because Ai-Da’s robotic painting arm is unable to stretch to a large scale canvas and is limited to A3 size canvas. There is no change to the underlying image in this process. Ai-Da then adds marks and texture onto the final canvas in order to complete the artwork. The positioning and color of these marks are decided by Ai-Da based on having a conversation about what she wants to do,” notes Meller.

Ai-Da is the brainchild of Meller, an art dealer and gallery director by trade, although it was built by Engineered Arts, the UK-based robotics group behind Ameca, one of the “world’s most advanced human-shaped robots.” It was programmed internationally, with her AI capabilities being developed by PhD students and professors at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham.

Advertisement

On top of being a creator, Ai-Da is considered a work of conceptual art in itself, designed to raise questions about AI, agency, and the nature of creativity.

“This auction is an important moment for the visual arts, where Ai-Da’s artwork brings focus on artworld and societal changes, as we grapple with the rising age of AI. The artwork ‘AI God’ raises questions about agency, as AI gains more power,” added Meller.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Helsinki’s Maki.vc poised to close fund at €100M, key focus will be sustainability, deeptech
  2. UK firms raise their inflation expectations – BoE survey
  3. Cancer Is Spreading In Shellfish, And Has Been For Hundreds Of Years
  4. 380-Million-Year-Old Fanged Fish Found In One Of The World’s Oldest Lakes

Source Link: AI Robot Artist Strikes Gold By Selling Painting Of Alan Turing For $1.3 Million

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Koalas Get A Shot At Survival As World-First Chlamydia Vaccine Gets Approval
  • We Could See A Black Hole Explode Within 10 Years – Unlocking The Secrets Of The Universe
  • Denisovan DNA May Make Some People Resistant To Malaria
  • Beware The Kellas Cat? This “Cryptid” Turned Out To Be Real, But It Wasn’t What People Thought
  • “They Simply Have A Taste For The Hedonists Among Us”: Festival Mosquito Study Has Some Bad News
  • What Is The Purpose Of Those Lines On Your Towels?
  • The Invisible World Around Us: How Can We Capture And Clean The Air We Breathe?
  • 85-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs Dated Using “Atomic Clock For Fossils” For The First Time
  • Why Shouldn’t You Kiss Babies? New Study Shows Even Healthy Newborns Can Become Severely Ill With RSV
  • Earth Has A New Quasi-Moon – And It Has Probably Been Around For Decades
  • Want To Kill Your Prey? Do It Feather-Legged Lace Weaver Spider Style And Vomit All Over Them
  • IFLScience The Big Questions: Are We In The Anthropocene?
  • The Wildfire Paradox Affecting 440 Million People Has As Worrying A Solution As You’d Expect
  • AI May Infringe On Your Rights And Insult Your Dignity (Unless We Do Something Soon)
  • How Do You Study Cryptic Species? We’re Finally Lifting The Lid On The World’s Least Understood Mammals
  • Once-In-A-Decade Close Encounter With Hazardous Asteroid 2025 FA22 Approaches
  • With 229 Pairs, This Beautiful Animal Has The Highest Number Of Chromosomes Of Any Animal
  • “An Unimaginable Breakthrough”: Loudest-Ever Gravitational Wave Collision Proves Stephen Hawking Correct
  • Exciting Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Considered Biosignatures
  • How Long Did Dinosaurs Live? “It’s A Big Surprise To People That Work On Them”
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version