Art market: AI raises the stakes at Christie's

A red-haired giant, queen of her cloud kingdom, tied up by the strings of her puffy jumpsuit; a series of nine faces emerging from the darkness through bursts of black and white paint; a two-metre-high and wide tapestry depicting a Marie-Antoinette in costume plugged into a computer… Three aesthetically distinct creations, yet linked by a common point: they are the few stars of a new kind of auction, entirely composed of works produced largely by artificial intelligence.

Organized by the New York branch of the art dealer baron Christie's, this event soberly named "Augmented Intelligence" does not hide its ambitions. "We are delighted to organize this auction devoted exclusively to AI art, with extraordinary works created by innovative minds," enthuses Nicole Sales Giles, vice president and director of "digital art" at the auction house. From robotics to GANs [“generative adversarial networks”, an AI technique used in particular to generate new images from an existing bank, editor’s note] From interactive experiences to artists, artists are incorporating artificial intelligence into their practices with many different and unique approaches.”

Multiple approaches represented by the 34 works in the lot, open for online auction since 2