Big-money bids for AI art at Christie’s spark thousands of protest signatures

Michigan-based film industry concept artist, Southen, expressed concerns about Christie’s auctioning AI-generated artwork alongside pieces created by artists using traditional methods. Southen and his peers have seen their income decrease due to AI’s ability to replicate their roles. The World Economic Forum reports that 41% of employers plan to downsize their workforce as AI becomes more prevalent, with many seeking talent skilled in AI tool design. Despite these challenges, Christie’s director of digital art, Nicole Sales Giles, believes AI is a natural progression in art history that will benefit the industry. Many artists in the auction used their own data, such as personal photography and poetry, to train their AI models. Digital artist Daniel Ambrosi, whose work is part of the auction, has been using AI for almost 10 years and fed Google’s DeepDream his photography of Central Park to create hallucinogenic images. Ambrosi sees himself as the leader of a jazz band, writing original compositions while the AI improvises and surprises him. Sales Giles believes that while there may be debate around the legality of AI-generated art, artists have long been influenced by others and AI is simply another tool for artistic creation. Christie’s aims to engage with AI in a way that supports artists and the industry as a whole, without exploiting artists or undermining traditional methods.

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