This is the first time an auction house has held such an event. Opponents are concerned that AI is being used to create some digital works on the basis of copyrighted works and that artists are being exploited.
The letter began circulating online over the weekend, following the announcement of Christie’s Augmented Intelligence auction, which Christie’s expects to raise more than $600,000 and includes works by a range of artists: Refik Anadol, Harold Cohen, Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, Alexander Reben, and Claire Silver. The auction is scheduled to begin on February 20 and run through March 5.
Embedding Study 1 (left) and Embedding Study 2 by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst in Christie's AI auction
The letter calling on Christie's to stop the auction has 3,936 signatures attached. The majority of the protesters claim that the AI used to create some of the works in the auction was trained on copyrighted works without the creators' permission.
“AI and the companies behind it exploit the works of human artists, using their work without permission or paying them to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Your support of these forms and those who use them will encourage AI companies to steal the works of human artists en masse,” the letter reads.
The use of artists’ copyrighted work to train the AI models that power programs like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Dall-E has led to lawsuits against the tech companies that create the software. Artists say their work was used by AI programs for training without permission or financial compensation. Tech companies defend themselves by citing fair use, which in some cases uses copyrighted material without permission.
“Why would Christie’s tolerate these models by helping sell AI works for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, when this practice directly impoverishes so many of the artists whose works they steal?” Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of Fairly Trained, a nonprofit organization, wrote on X.
The letter was sent to Christie's digital art specialists Nicole Sales Giles and Sebastian Sanchez, who are in charge of the auction. In a statement, a spokesperson for Christie's told The Art Newspaper : "The artists represented in this auction all have strong multidisciplinary artistic practices, some of whom are now recognized in leading museum collections. The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their output."
Study 33 by Sougwen Chung is estimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000.
Sarp Kerem Yavuz, an artist who has incorporated AI into his work and whose work has been included in a Christie's auction (and is now a contributor to The Art Newspaper ), says: "Most AI-generated images are the result of combining millions—literally millions—of images, which means no single artist can claim that the image of a meadow, knight, cat, or flower is based on their specific creation. AI-generated images mimic human inspiration in many ways. They're just more efficient at analyzing information."
As AI technology advances and becomes more integrated into everyday life, copyright and fair use laws are struggling to keep up. Last month, the US Copyright Office ruled that artists can copyright work they create with AI tools, but that “works or materials that are entirely generated by AI” are not eligible for protection.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/hang-ngan-nguoi-keu-goi-christies-huy-bo-cuoc-dau-gia-tac-pham-do-ai-tao-ra-185250212082228163.htm
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