First AI generated artwork auctions for 40 times over its estimated price

The first ever painting created by artificial intelligence (AI) has sold for more than 40 times its estimated price at an auction.

An artwork called ‘Portrait of Edmond Belamy’, created by an artificially intelligent program, fetched $432,000 at the Christie’s Prints and Multiples art auction held at New York.

The artwork is the first made up completely by AI to go up for sale. Though the piece was expected to gather between $7,000 and $10,000, it managed to get up to 10 times its estimated price, selling for $432,000, reported BBC News.

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The painting was made with the help of an algorithm called ‘Generative Adversarial Networks’ (GANs) created by a Paris-based art collective ‘Obvious’. The team fed the algorithm with a data set of about 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th and 20th centuries.

A ‘Generator’ portion of the algorithm then used its knowledge of those art works to start creating images of its own. Another part, ‘Discriminator’ was used to tell the difference between the human-made art and the art being produced by the Generator.

The process was then continued until the Discriminator could no longer tell the two artworks apart. It was then decided that the piece of art was good enough to sell, as per Engadget.

“AI is just one of several technologies that will have an impact on the art market of the future - although it is far too early to predict what those changes might be,” said Richard Lloyd, who organized the sale.