AI-Generated Art Sells for Nearly Half a Million Dollars at Christie's

It's the first auction house sale of art created by an algorithm

A new painter with a very methodical style just made a big splash in the art scene.

Famed British auction house Christie’s just sold a portrait generated by an algorithm in the first-ever transaction involving an art piece created by an automated entity. The somewhat blurry but discernible painting, Portrait of Edmond Belamy, netted $432,000, beating the auction house’s expected price of $7,000 to $10,000 many times over.

The art was created by a French collective of artists and artificial intelligence researchers called Obvious with code mostly borrowed from a 19-year-old AI artist and programmer named Robbie Barrat.

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