'Augmented Intelligence': Christie’s Reveals First Auction Dedicated to AI Art

Luxury auction giant Christie’s is set to host its first-ever sale comprised solely of artworks made with AI—a key art world stamp of approval for the novel and at-times controversial technology. 

The auction, titled “Augmented Intelligence,” will be open for bidding and on view at Christie’s Manhattan gallery from February 20 to March 5. Per Christie’s, it is the first AI-dedicated sale ever put on by a major auction house. 

The collection will feature over 20 AI-infused artworks from a variety of prominent digital artists known for exploring the relationship between automation and human creativity, including Pindar Van Arman, Harold Cohen, and Alexander Reben.

Several pioneers of on-chain art well known for their NFT pieces will also supply works for the auction, such as Refik Anadol, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, and Claire Silver. 

“The auction redefines the relationship between art and technology, showing collectors human agency in the age of AI in Fine Art,” Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s head of digital art sales, said in a statement shared with Decrypt. “From robotics to GANs to interactive experiences, artists incorporate artificial intelligence into their practices in many unique ways.”

The pieces on auction will range in medium from sculpture and paintings to screens, interactive works, and digital-native NFTs. 

Among the pieces expected to fetch the largest sum at auction is Pinar Van Arman’s “Emerging Faces,” a series of physical canvases painted by two AI agents that collaborated in 2017 to imagine human faces with generative AI and then paint them. The works are some of the first to have ever been painted autonomously by neural networks, and are anticipated to sell together in one lot for up to $250,000.

Other works on auction will come to life in real time. At Christie’s Rockefeller Center gallery, a large-scale robot guided by the coding of Alexander Reben will paint more and more of a fresh canvas as bids for the painting rise—allowing auction participants to take part in the work’s creation.

In recent years, both Christie’s and its archrival, Sotheby’s, have aggressively planted their flags in the emergent (and often lucrative) world of digital art. Both houses have hosted numerous crypto-centered auctions since 2021, when Christie’s sold an NFT by the artist Beeple for a record-shattering $69.3 million.

Edited by Andrew Hayward