The American auction house Sotheby’s will put up for sale a painting created by a humanoid robot. The abstract portrait of Alan Turing was painted by Ai-Da, an experimental robotics project powered by artificial intelligence.
Ai-Da, a robot powered by artificial intelligence PHOTO: popsci
Ai-Da will be the world’s first robot artist, whose work is offered for sale by a major auction house. The auction is scheduled to take place between October 31 and November 7, writes popsci.
Completed in 2019 by gallerist Aidan Meller in collaboration with researchers at Oxford University and robotics company Engineered Arts, Ai-Da uses cameras to capture visual data that on-board graphics algorithms then use to formulate generative images with a some guidance and human adjustments.
From here, digital drawings are recreated on paper using brushes controlled by the two bionic arms.
“When we talk about Ai-Da as an artist and Ai-Da’s artwork, we do so in full recognition of his composite personality as a unique AI/machine/human fusion and his status as a non-conscious machine”the robot’s creators write on its website.
At the same time, however, they intend to develop “his personality and artwork as it is an intelligent mirror of contemporary currents and behaviours”.
Physically, the robot was built to resemble a white woman with brown eyes and a bob haircut, while its name is meant to honor Ada Lovelace.
The 19th-century English mathematician is considered the first person to identify applications of machines beyond simple calculations, and also contributed to Charles Babbage’s designs for a mechanical computer, although her groundbreaking work was interrupted in 1852 when she died at 36 of uterine cancer.
Ai-Da’s designers often dress him in a variety of wardrobes, including dresses and jumpsuits, and even occasionally go so far as to add jewelry such as necklaces.
Since its debut, Ai-Da has participated in a TED conference and presented before the UK House of Lords by using a large-scale language model (LLM) that responded to pre-written human questions and data.
Meanwhile, his artwork has been exhibited around the world, including a five-panel polyptych at the United Nations for the AI for Global Good Summit in May 2024.
Alan Turing, the pioneers of artificial intelligence
One of these 64-inch by 90.5-inch portraits, “AI God,” will now make history through the upcoming Sotheby’s auction. The dark-hued rendering depicts the disarticulated face of Alan Turing, one of the early pioneers of computer science and artificial intelligence.
Artist Meller claims that Ai-Da’s painting is “ethereal and haunting” and causes the audience to
“continues to wonder where the power of artificial intelligence and the global race to harness its power will take usit is”.
A former World War II codebreaker, Turing eventually became one of the first computer scientists to warn of the potential capabilities and dangers of AI.
Turing eventually committed suicide in 1954, two years after accepting chemical castration following a conviction for homosexuality – illegal at the time in the United Kingdom. It took nearly 60 years for the British government to issue an official apology for his treatment “terrible”, while Queen Elizabeth II formally pardoned Turing in 2013.
However, in the decades following his death, one of the most famous benchmarks for judging the supposed self-awareness and actual “intelligence” of an AI became the late innovator’s Turing Test.
