TRANSCRIPT
Christie’s auction house in New York has sold everything from Pablo Picasso to Princess Diana’s dresses.
Earlier this month, it auctioned off 34 works including digital art sold as unique items knows as non-fungible tokens, and a self-painting robot that added to the canvas each time a new bid was made.
All artworks were generated using artificial intelligence.
It was the first ever AI art sale at a major auction house.
Dr Jasmin Pfefferkorn is a Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne.
She believes AI may increasingly become a reality at galleries in the future.
“If we put it in a historical context, I think it is something that will eventually become embraced. I often liken it to photography which wasn’t recognised as a legitimate art form for quite some time until it started to enter into museums and then into auction houses et cetera. I think we can see a similar, somewhat sped up trajectory for AI as well.”
The sale, titled Augmented Intelligence amassed over 1.1 million dollars [[US$700,000]], despite six of the artworks not selling.
It also accumulated over 6,500 signatures by artists calling to cancel the auction.
In an open letter to the gallery, the letter said, “if you have any respect for human artists, you cancel the auction. Yours sincerely, the undersigned artists.”
For Sue Beyer, the distinction isn’t so clear.
As a multi-disciplinary artist, she says developments in AI simultaneously fascinate and repel her.
“I’m using a lot of different new media and also AI. The AI, I really enjoy using because it’s not perfect and I like its weaknesses. I’m sort of treating like an oracle or not God, but I give the AI an instruction, or prompt and it gives me information in return. It’s like a collaborative process.”
Ms Beyer is even using the technology to learn more about herself.
“The way I’ve been using it is not really offensive or scary. Nothing like Black Mirror [[dystopian television series]] or The Terminator [[sci-fi movie]] or anything like that. I’m asking questions like ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who is Sue Beyer?’. I’m sort of using irony because I’m looking at what it means to be human using something that obviously isn’t human.”
Last year, the Brisbane Portrait Prize announced it was changing its entry guidelines stating, “it is impractical to have a blanket ban on the use of AI.”
Initially, it allowed entrants to submit artworks completely generated using image creation platforms like Midjourney or DALL-E.
After receiving criticism by parts of the artistic community, organisers reconsidered its entry requirements to only allow works partly generated using AI.
In the end, Dennis McCart’s self-portrait using reprocessed AI images took home $10,000 for the Digital Award.
Birrunga Wiradyuri, a Wiradjuri man and Founder of Birrunga Gallery won the competition's Packer Prize in 2021 for his portrait titled Night Rainbow.
His First Nations gallery boycotted the prize last year for its guidelines on AI.
He says he will not be entering the award again this year.
“It was really unfortunate, because I know there are some very reasonable people within that organisation. I just can’t say I’ve got a great deal of respect for the decisions made. It would have been very easy to go, ‘Oh, ok. We hadn’t considered that. It doesn’t even have to be considered a real good point, just a reasonable point. Why don’t time out on this?’. Everyone would have gone ‘Great decision, the Brisbane Portrait Prize listens to Blackfellas.’ Instead, what we’ve got is we’re pressing on regardless because we’ve got experts who say its harmless. I don’t get it, I really don’t.”
Mr Wiradyuri believes it’s not the change he opposed to.
In fact, he says he’s in favour of controversy and challenging messages.
“I’m not about censoring, I’m not about that at all. I just feel as though at a minimum you should not do harm and at the moment, I can see this doing harm. So, there’s this reckless notion that it’s ok to harvest and reproduce First Nations artwork. The ramifications for that are next level cultural appropriation, cultural theft, it’s colonisation, it’s disenfranchisement, it’s diminishing, it’s diluting, it’s invisible-ing us again, another level of invisible-ing us. I mean, that all adds up to false representation.”
Mr Wiradyuri says cultural appropriation and stereotypical perceptions of First Nations art is a reality he still confronts.
As part of his galleries Cultural Creative Development Program, he provides professional exposure for emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists.
That means creating artworks for businesses' Reconciliation Action Plans.
Mr Wiradyuri says he still gets asked for traditional dot painting art.
It’s a style derived from the Central and Western Desert regions of Australia - but not Wiradjuri in New South Wales, where he is from.
Dr Louise Buckingham is the CEO of Arts Law Centre Australia, which provides specialised legal support to First Nations creators through its Artists in the Black service.
She says with the rise of AI, cultural flattening and fake Indigenous art is rife.
“We’re well aware of how important the Indigenous art market is and also how extensive the market for fake souvenirs and fake art has been alongside of that and the damage it does to our existing art market. You know, one set of stakeholders is benefiting to a greater extent than ever in the context and history of the technology boom and one group is losing out to a greater extent than ever.”
Adobe Stock, a graphics software that provides royalty free photos and graphics, has faced scrutiny by the National Indigenous Times for its representations of First Nations art and culture.
A search of ‘Indigenous Australian’ brings up images of people with generic body markings or wearing Native American feather headdresses.
People wearing business suits on the platform are quote “representing workplace diversity”.
A search for ‘Indigenous Australian art’ surfaces images of didgeridoos and boomerangs, AI rock and dot style paintings.
An extended licence for each of these AI images costs nearly 90 dollars on average.
Under Australia’s current legislation, copyright for artistic works generally last the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years.
Dr Buckingham says while this may seem like an extensive period, for First Nations communities whose art and culture moves across past, present and future, it can raise issues.
In the case of AI-generated art, it gets more complex.
In Australia, copyright law does not subsist or exist for artificial intelligence, as legally, there is considered to be no human authorship or originality to protect.
It also means that concerns over how AI models are being trained using artists' works are difficult to legislate.
“The responses to things like the Christie’s auction which received a lot more in sales than people anticipated, but it also elicited a response from creators who were outraged that the notion of an auction for this kind of artwork. You know, there have been other responses from all around the world from creators of all descriptions and when we are talking about visual art, and we have class action complaints in the US that we will be watching very closely here in Australia.”
A working group on Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property was established in December last year, to protect First Nations knowledge amidst the rise of AI.
Dr Buckingham says consultation from the working group has already been paused until after the federal election.
In the meantime, The University of Chicago has developed tools like Nightshade or Glaze, which are being used by artists to fight back against AI data scraping.
These tools transform data from images into “poison”, so that AI training on them without consent learn unpredictable behaviours.
With this software, the university says a prompt that asks for an image of a cow flying in space might instead get an image of a handbag in space.
Dr Pfefferkorn from the Art, AI and Digital Ethics centre believes while AI is new, artists have been balancing the relationship between ethics, technology and science for centuries.
“I’m really hopeful the more we engage critically and with the different complexities that are being presented and already have been explored by artists in this space for such a long time, the more we’ll be able to push back and reclaim some of our agency because we will be able to see there are alternatives and other options.”
