Christie's New York to auction an artwork created by an algorithm

This fall, as part of the ongoing dialogue over AI and art, Christie’s will become the first major auction house to offer a work of art created by an algorithm, which will be included in the Prints & Multiples auction in New York October 23-25. The work is titled Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (estimate: $7,000-10,000), created by artificial intelligence and conceived by the Paris-based collective Obvious. The portrait depicts a gentleman, possibly French and — to judge by his dark frockcoat and plain white collar — a man of the church. The work appears unfinished: the facial features are somewhat indistinct and there are blank areas of canvas. The portrait, however, is not the product of a human mind. It is one of a group of 11 unique portraits of the fictional Belamy family conceived by Obvious, a Paris-based collective consisting of Hugo Caselles-Dupré, Pierre Fautrel and Gauthier Vernier. Hugo Caselles-Dupré, repre