An AI-generated nude photo just sold for $340,000. So why are people angry?

With all the developments in AI art over the past year taking up so much of the public consciousness, it can be easy to forget that the movement has roots that go way back before Stable Diffusion or Midjourney came on the scene. Robbie Barratfor example, is a household name in the universe of artificial intelligence and generative art and also represents an important part of crypto art history.

Having experimented with machine learning and generative adversarial networks (GANs) since 2018, Barrat’s early explorations led him to create a series of 300 AI-generated nude art portraits that have since become the most sought-after crypto art.

Recently, Barrat’s AI generated nude portrait #7 frame #111 sold for 175 ETH ($343,761). The sale has largely drawn criticism from the anti-AI art crowd, who claim the artwork is ugly, yet another example of unimaginative art spewed out by an unfeeling algorithm. However, such debugging covers much of Barrat’s artistic vision and the cultural importance of the work and its origins. Whether you’re a critic or supporter of Barrat’s work, both are worth checking out.

The Lost Robbies

The reason for the legacy status of those 300 nude portraits goes beyond the innovative approach Barrat took in creating them. In the summer of 2018, Christie’s hosted its first-ever Tech Summit in London shortly after the launch of NFT marketplace SuperRare. The world of tokenized digital art had barely entered the consciousness of the general public at the time, and SuperRare was encouraged by the auction house to contribute to the gift bags of the event attendees.

They teamed up with and enlisted Barrat, who was the first artist to tokenize art on the platform, and Jason Bailey, the first collector, to create artwork consisting of 300 frames that could be punched and given away to people at the event. Thus was born AI Generated Nude Portrait #7, consisting of 300 unique images layered, which when placed on top of each other would present the viewer with the finished piece. The works were added to ETH gift cards that recipients could later redeem for the 1/1 token.

But few have redeemed their gift cards over the years, meaning many of the pieces have been lost. Appropriately, the pieces in the collection became known simply as The Lost Robbies. To this day, only 46 of the generative nudes can be found on Barrat’s SuperRare page.

A few months after Christie’s tech summit, Barrat’s code was used by French artist trio Obvious to create Portrait of Edmond Belamy, which sold at Christie’s auction for $432,500. It was the first AI-generated artwork sold by the old auction house, and while Barrat initially received no credit or compensation for the work, the sale put Barrat on the art world’s radar.

Combined with The Lost Robbies’ origin story and subsequent rarity, the pieces that came out of the original group of 300 eventually sold for a whopping $1 million. The old auction house Sotheby’s even wrote of Barrat’s Portrait #7 Frame #64, which sold for more than $800,000 in March 2022, that it was symbolic of a unique moment in time when a pre-pandemic shift in the art world was “digital art”. catapulted”. in the cultural and economic psyche of the world.”

Aesthetics, narrative and everything in between

Abstract art is always subject to harsh condemnation, especially if it comes with a high price tag. Barrat’s AI nude portraits, AI Generated Nude Portrait #7 Frame #111 in particular, are no different. The piece has been referred as ‘repugnant’, reminiscent of a ‘dead deer’, and everything in between, but ridicule over the appearance of the artwork is the minor point here. Great art need not look beautiful, even if all members of society agreed on what is or means beautiful, which is a foolish message in itself.

The crucial issue is how the sale of this piece of AI artwork has sparked the logically inconsistent anger of the movement’s detractors. On the one hand, AI art critics often argue that art created with the technology can never really be art – even if it is aesthetically pleasing – precisely because of the lack of a human story behind it, whether that story is connected to the journey of an artist or their skill. This argument has several holes, but it stumbles most when placed alongside another common complaint, often lobbed by the same AI commentators, that the art lacks a human warmth in its aesthetic. The think twice is immediately clear,

Nor has the crypto art community taken kindly to the scathing comments about what it sees as a seminal piece of art history that preceded the inventive, time-defining art movement they’ve come to know and love.

Ultimately, trying to understand the value of AI art is no different than trying to understand the value of art made in any other medium and with any other toolset, an interrogation that yields both immediate and elusive answers. Barrat’s nude portraits not only represent a moment along the timeline in the evolution of digital and AI art, but their story is so compelling that it is as tangible and present as the flesh and blood that the portraits themselves abstractly depict.

It may be difficult to put a price tag on history, but the sale of AI Generated Nude Portrait #7 Frame #111, along with every other piece in The Lost Robbies, is a manifestation of people’s attempt to make history to do her justice. We shouldn’t begrudge people for trying.