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Kamala Thiagarajan

Like it or not, Christie’s “Augmented Intelligence” sale, which runs on to March 5, marks a major milestone in the world of art. It is the first time a major auction house is selling an entire art collection created with artificial intelligence (AI).
Major auction houses have dabbled in AI art in the past. In 2018, Christie’s auctioned Edmond de Belamy, a portrait of a blurry male figure generated by an algorithm, for US$432,500. Last year, A.I. God, a portrait of English mathematician Alan Turing created by robot artist Ai-Da, went for US$1.32 million.
The role of art is changing and auction houses offering AI art is merely a reflection of how much the technology has proliferated in our lives. But not everyone agrees.
An open letter from artists around the world calling on Christie’s to cancel its AI art auction has garnered more than 6,400 signatures, arguing that AI models are trained on copyrighted work and therefore exploit human artists. Similarly, thousands of musicians, artists, authors and journalists are protesting against planned changes to UK copyright law that could make it easier for AI companies to exploit copyrighted work.
Critics argue that AI art is a form of theft and exploitation. There is also a debate over whether AI can really be considered a powerhouse of original creativity and if AI art would debilitate the creations of human artists.


For all the angst, it’s not all a lost cause. For the last several years, artists, especially in Asia, have been finding novel ways to deploy AI to better their art.
For instance, US-based Yukti Arora, a keen student of Bharatanatyam, the Indian classical dance, wrote Natya. AI, an app that offers Bharatanatyam dancers real-time voice and visual feedback during practice, using AI to track body movements and create a “movement library” where users can track the consistency of their steps and body language.
Increasingly, artists are also using AI to challenge stereotypes and prejudices. In Singapore, AI artist Niceaunties focuses on “aunties”, a term of address for older women, in bizarre situations, offering viewers a chance to quash their stereotypes. Her art features aunties luxuriating in a steaming bowl of ramen, engaging with a camel made out of cigarettes and driving a vehicle made out of sushi.

In Pakistan, art director and production designer Hashim Ali uses AI art to reimagine what Disney princesses would look like from a South Asian perspective, part of a growing group of South Asian artists whose work, one magazine says, promises “a decolonisation of storytelling traditions”.
In defence against allegations of copyright infringements, AI artists say they use royalty-free resources, open-access generative AI and digital painting, and maintain that there is a human heart (and talented eye) behind their machine-created art.
Meanwhile, in China, as one recent academic paper pointed out: “New ways of working with AI and digital software are [already] embedded and normalised in everyday Chinese artistic practices.” It added that “Chinese artists are mastering AI and opening up new spaces for creativity”, while “the contemporary art sector in China has already transitioned to a new ‘digital way’ in artistic creation”.


When artists embrace AI on their own in this way, exploring and pushing the boundaries of their art with technology, it may be easier to accept than art that is powered entirely by machine learning.
When Japan’s Frontier Works and KaKa Creation announced that 95 per cent of their new anime, Twins Hinahima, set to be released this spring, was produced by AI, it sparked curiosity and excitement. The anime’s website acknowledged that AI was becoming more prevalent and stresses it was used merely as a “supporting tool”, adding that a “gap” still exists between human creators and AI.


But for many, that gap is receding quickly. Art collective Teamlab, for instance, which puts up exhibits in galleries worldwide, features artists working in collaboration with engineers and mathematicians to create immersive art. Such exhibits may change the way we interact with art.
The way museums are displaying art is changing too. In 2022, the Museum of Art and Photography in Bengaluru, India, collaborated with Microsoft’s AI for Cultural Heritage Initiative to launch AI platform Interwoven, which draws connections between the museum’s South Asian textiles in a 2000 exhibition to art around the world.
AI was enlisted to help create a fascinating, multilayered narrative around its existing collection, potentially drawing a much wider and more eclectic global audience.
While art solely created by AI remains divisive and the controversy over the Christie’s AI art auction rages on, there is a case to be made for artistic collaborations with machine learning intelligence – it may well be the future of art.


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While protests rage from New York to London, artists from China and Japan to India and Singapore are using AI to better their craft


While protests rage from New York to London, artists from China and Japan to India and Singapore are using AI to better their craft.


Artificial intelligence (AI)

ChatGPT and other generative AIs

Singapore

Auctions

Asia Tech

Pakistan

Microsoft

Japan

India

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Rather than resist AI art, Asia is embracing its future

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While protests rage from New York to London, artists from China and Japan to India and Singapore are using AI to better their craft

While protests rage from New York to London, artists from China and Japan to India and Singapore are using AI to better their craft