New York: The world’s first artwork by humanoid robot was to be sold for a whopping US$1.08m in New York on Thursday, The Guardian reported.
The 2.2 metre portrait of English mathematician Alan Turing titled as A.I. God was created by the robot Ai-Da.
The painting got 27 bidding, before breaking the pre-sale expectations of fetching between $120,000 and $180,000.
Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist, thus made significant mark at Sotheby’s, where the auction took place.
The auction house stated that ‘record-breaking sale’ of the artwork ‘marks a moment in the history of modern and contemporary art’, adding that it reflects a ‘growing intersection between AI technology and the global art market’.
Responding to the sale, robot Ai-Da said that ‘The key value of my work is its capacity to serve as a catalyst for dialogue about emerging technologies’.
Ai-Da created the portrait of Turing, a mathematician, who was also early computer scientist and worked as a code breaker fighting Nazi Germany.
Turing is known to have raised concerns about AI in the 1950s itself.
Ai-Da, resembling a woman, is named after Ada Lovelace, who was the world’s first computer programmer.
Aidan Meller, a specialist in modern and contemporary art, who devised Ai-Da said that ‘The greatest artists in history grappled with their period of time’.
A team led by Meller created Ai-Da working with AI experts at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham.
Ai-Da’s conversation with studio members generates ideas and the robot before looking at the picture of Turing using camera eyes was asked what style, colour, content, and texture to use, according to the report.
Meller called Ai-Da’s works as “ethereal and haunting”, adding that they ‘continue to question where the power of AI will take us, and the global race to harness its power’.