A painting by an AI robot of renowned World War II codebreaker Alan Turing has sold at auction for $1,084,800 (£836,667). Sotheby’s announced that 27 bids were received for its digital art auction of “A.I. god,” which was originally estimated at $120,000 to $180,000. Mathematician Turing is a pioneer of computer science and is considered the father of artificial intelligence (AI).
The auction house said the historic sale “breaks new ground in the global art market and sets auction standards for humanoid robot artworks.” It added that AI Da Robot’s work is “the first humanoid robot artist whose work has been sold at auction.” Ai-Da Robot has created a total of 15 paintings of Alan Turing, each taking up to eight hours to complete. The piece is an original large-format portrait of Turing, who studied at King’s College, Cambridge.
The scientist helped decipher and decode the infamous Enigma machine at Bletchley Park, playing a key role in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. After the war, he created detailed designs for a digital computer in the modern sense. Sotheby’s said the online auction, which ended at 7 pm GMT on Thursday, was purchased by an unknown buyer for a price “far above the estimated value of the artwork.”
The auction house announced the sale price of the first artwork by a humanoid robot artist, saying it “commemorates a moment in the history of modern and contemporary art and reflects the growing interface between AI technology and the global art market.”
Speaking using an advanced AI language model, Ai-Da Robot said, “The main value of my work is its ability to act as a catalyst for dialogue about new technologies.”
The piece “invites the viewer to ‘reflect on the god-like nature of AI and computing, but also to consider the ethical and social impacts of these advancements,” the robot said.
