Ai-Da Robot Portrait of Alan Turing Sold for Over $1 Million at Sotheby’s Auction

A piece of artwork, created by the world’s first “ultra-realistic” humanoid robot named Ai-Da, was sold for over $1 million recently from any auction house against its estimate of value between $120,000 and $180,000. The said piece of art *AI God: Portrait of Alan Turing* was sold at $1,084,000 in the auction house in a Digital Art Day sale held on 7th November.

The portrait, which was created by Ai-Da in 2023, is in homage to Alan Turing, the mathematician whose work founded the concept and basis for modern computing and AI. Sotheby’s described the piece as reflecting both the legacy of Turing and the larger implications of AI on humanity, creativity, and identity. The artwork will combine AI algorithms, robotic processes, and traditional artistic techniques to explore complex themes such as agency and the role of technology in shaping human experience.

Ai-Da’s work forms part of a series of five portraits about the impact of AI, including depictions of Turing himself, pioneering female mathematician Ada Lovelace, and Ai-Da—a group drawing inspiration from the style of 20th-century masters like Pablo Picasso, whose fragmented approach to depiction speaks volumes regarding human suffering and also echos the warnings from the pens of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.

The sale marked a huge moment in the relationship between art and AI, according to Aidan Meller, the UK-based art dealer who created Ai-Da. He said, “AI God raises profound and perturbing questions about AI’s growing power and influence, especially in respect of agency and creation.

Earlier this year, Ai-Da was presenting *AI God* at the United Nations in Geneva during the *AI for Good* Global Summit, where she also showed her self-portrait. Sotheby’s said the portrait of Turing not only paid homage to the famous mathematician but was a pensive exploration of how technology was redefining human identity.

Named after Ada Lovelace, Ai-Da is a dream of Turing now true: machine intelligence that can simulate human thought. *AI God* addresses the famous question Turing once asked: “Can machines think?” The question is at once fundamental and related to the core of her own existence as a creative machine.

While the work of Ai-Da is, in fact, a milestone, the relationship between traditional artists and AI-generated art remains very contentious. Ireland’s first gallery solely for AI-inspired art, the Cueva Gallery, underlined such tensions in 2020 between “tech-savvy” artists and their traditional counterparts who dabble with AI bereft of any need for coding skills.

That friction has only continued to build, including in a recent lawsuit filed by a group of artists against companies such as Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt for copyright infringement by AI-generated pieces. The release of tools last year, like *Nightshade*, allows artists to “poison” images so that they cannot be used by AI models, further complicating this evolving technological and artistic relationship.

Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to follow my whatsapp channel