Who likes AI art?

In a couple of days, a new auction by Christie’s will begin, but despite being the largest auction house in the world, this time the company has failed to gain the support of fans. Thousands have signed an open letter against the sale scheduled for February 20, which is exclusively dedicated to AI-generated artworks. It is the first time that the world's largest auction house has launched such an auction, which will include more than twenty lots spanning several decades, from the 1960s to today. Only 26% of the works included in Christie’s sale will be NFTs, while the rest consists of digital screens, sculptures, paintings, prints, and light boxes. According to the auction house’s estimates, the sales could reach a total of $600,000. However, the company now has to face thousands of people who have explicitly demanded the cancellation of the auction, arguing that the programs used to create the artworks were developed based on works protected by copyright. The news has caused a stir not only in New York, where the Christie’s auction is set to take place, but also in Europe: this spring, the Milan Design Week will be focused on AI, so this controversy offers a small preview of the criticism that the world’s most important design fair may have to deal with.

The open letter addressed to the organizers of the AI auction began circulating the day after the sale was announced. The artworks included in the auction feature the signatures of well-known artists, including Refik Anadol, Harold Cohen, Holly Herndon and Mar Dryhurst, Alexander Reben, and Claire Silver. However, the most significant criticism raised against their works concerns their authenticity. «These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them - reads the letter - Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies’ mass theft of human artists.» What the letter addressed to Christie’s states is not incorrect: the AI programs Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E are currently involved in lawsuits for potential copyright infringement. 

Hundreds of artists from around the world have spoken out against new AI technologies, stating that the companies that trained these software programs used their works without providing them any form of recognition or compensation. In response, tech companies have defended themselves by citing fair use, which in some cases allows the use of copyrighted material. Similarly, one of the artists whose work will be featured in Christie’s auction, Sarp Kerem Yavuz, argues that the idea that AI-created art is theft is a misunderstanding of artistic technique, as training software requires feeding it «a combination of millions of images», so it makes no sense for an artist to claim ownership over an AI-generated artwork.