Christie's upcoming Augmented Intelligence sale represents a pivotal moment for auction houses, focusing exclusively on machine learning-created artworks by notable digital artists. In the past, Christie's and Sotheby's have auctioned AI-generated art, but this sale is particularly controversial. Many artists, such as Karla Ortiz, argue that the works were created using AI models trained on unlicensed material, raising significant copyright concerns. Ortiz leads a protest against the auction, asserting that it exemplifies how the auction house prioritizes profit over the well-being of artists, provoking a large backlash that has attracted widespread attention and thousands of signatures.
"It's really fun to be part of this," said Reben, an artist-in-residence at Meta, whose contribution to Christie's sale is a work painted live by a robot -- which gets larger the more that people bid. "It's kind of a benchmark."
Many other artists, however, are less than enthusiastic. "Christie's just doesn't care about artists," said artist Karla Ortiz, a plaintiff in an ongoing class action copyright infringement lawsuit against several image-based AI companies. "They just want to make money."
The letter protesting the Christie's sale has garnered thousands of signatures from artists, academics and others around the world since it appeared online Feb. 8. "These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment."
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