Augmented Intelligence, Christie’s first auction dedicated solely to AI-generated art, features over 20 works spanning five decades, including pieces by pioneering artists from the 1960s as well as contemporary figures like Refik Anadol and Holly Herndon. Meanwhile, nearly 4,000 artists have signed a letter urging Christie’s to cancel the sale.
Only 26% of the artwork will consist of digital NFTs; the rest being light boxes, screens, sculptures, paintings, and prints. One of the most important attractions of the event is a 12-foot robot created by Alexander Reben that will live-paint an oil painting at Christie’s Rockefeller Center. The robot will progressively paint new sections of the canvas with each online bid, starting at $100.
Notable works in Christie’s auction include Van Arman’s Emerging Faces (2017), which uses two AI programs—one painting a human face and another stopping as soon as it recognizes the image—resulting in haunting abstract portraits.
Also, up for sale are Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Embedding Study (2024) pieces, previously featured in the 2024 Whitney Biennial. These pieces, which recreate Herndon’s look by showing a comical person in a puffy spacesuit, were created using a text-to-image AI model.
The letter opposes the auction, arguing that AI models used to create these artworks are trained on copyrighted material without consent, enabling AI companies to profit from artists’ work without compensation. It urges Christie’s to cancel the auction, condemning its support of AI firms that exploit human artists.
Artists Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, who are suing AI companies for allegedly using their work without permission, are among the signatories. Opponents, including Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of Fairly Trained, argue that Christie’s legitimizes unethical AI models that profit from artists without compensation.
In response to the open letter calling for the cancellation of its Augmented Intelligence auction, Christie’s defended the sale, stating that the participating artists have established multidisciplinary practices and are using AI to enhance their creativity, not replace human artistry.
Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s VP and Director of Digital Art Sales, emphasized that AI in this auction is a tool for collaboration, highlighting the human agency present in all the works.
Artists involved in the auction have also pushed back against the criticism. Refik Anadol dismissed the letter as “doomsday hysteria,” arguing that most artists in the sale are using their own datasets and AI models rather than relying on scraped content. Beeple, a well-known digital artist, posted an illustration on X titled THE WAR OF ART, depicting a robot vandalizing a protest poster while holding a human on a leash.
Meanwhile, digital artist Jack Butcher turned the protest itself into an NFT artwork titled Undersigned Artists, minting the open letter into a piece of digital art—ironically making it part of the AI-generated system it critiques.
