The AI ‘machine artist’ making millions of dollars

Generative AI is making huge waves across industries and services finance has human resources and technology spending grows quickly.

And the art world is no different: some artists use it to help generate workand others are shocked by his abilities.

Now, a new AI “artist” is making a splash, raising central questions about the nature of art, its creation, and its ownership.

Botto, described as a “decentralized autonomous artist” on his website, produced about 150 images, or “works,” which together brought prizes more than 5 million dollars via auction since 2021. Botto’s work is influenced by a group of people who vote on which image goes up for auction each week and in turn help determine what she creates next.

“If there’s sort of a goal for Botto, it’s firstly to be recognized as an artist, and I think secondly is to become a successful artist,” said Simon Hudson, operator and co-manager of Botto, during a video call with CNBC. .

“A successful artist, you can look at it from many different angles: commercial success, financial success, cultural success, spiritual success – whether it really has that deep of an impact on people,” he said.

Botto was designed by software collective ElevenYellow and German artist and computer programmer Mario Klingemann to produce images based on algorithmically generated prompts.

He was initially given a general idea of ​​what a prompt was “without any specific guidance on aesthetics, and it started with combining random words, phrases, and symbols…to produce images,” he said. Hudson told CNBC via email. Symbols such as plus and minus were used to add or reduce emphasis, he said.

Each week, Botto generates about 70,000 images and presents 350 of them to a group of about 5,000 people known as BottoDAO, or decentralized autonomous organization. The BottoDAO votes for which unique image will be put up for sale via the SuperRare non-fungible token auction platform.

Everyone can vote on parts that Botto produces for free, Hudson said. But to “fully participate in the economy,” DAO members purchase Botto tokens and in return receive points to spend or vote on Botto’s production, Hudson said. “There is no passive income. You have to pitch in and help train Botto,” Hudson said.

Half of the proceeds from the auction go to BottoDAO voters and the other half to Botto’s “treasury”, which pays for operating costs such as servers. One Botto token is equivalent to one voting point, and returns are prorated and awarded regardless of which image an individual voted for.

Botto then uses the voting data to help it decide what to produce next, and the process continues.

Klingemann believes that in the near future, thanks to advances in AI and machine learning, “machine artists will be able to create more interesting works than humans,” according to an article on his website. One of Klingemann’s pieces became the first AI-produced work to be sold by Sotheby’s in Europe, with a 2019 auction fetching £40,000.

The value of Botto’s images appears to be increasing, Hudson said.

Two early images auctioned during a quiet period for the AI ​​art market were given reserve prices of around $13,000 to $15,000 by BottoDAO, but they did not sell. However, at an October auction at Sotheby’s New York, the same pictures – “Expose Stream” and “Exorbitant Stage” – sold for a total of $276,000, Hudson said. Botto is also the third largest seller by total sales on the SuperRare platform for last year, as of December 12.

Is Botto an artist in his own right? “It’s a matter of perception,” Hudson said. “Certainly, Botto is currently a collaboration between machine and crowd. The human hands are certainly there, but the setup is such that Botto has retained the central role of authorship,” he said.

Botto has the potential to change the way art — and artists — are perceived, Hudson said. “With Botto, it eliminates this myth of the lone genius artist and shows how the work of art is actually a collective process… of creating meaning. And when you have a deluge of content generated by the AI, it becomes even more of a process,” he said.