What Is AI Art?
Updated: Feb 14
With the announcement of a groundbreaking auction dedicated to AI art, we trace the history, technological advancements, key artists from the established to the new guard, and Christie’s role in shaping the landscape of computational creativity
Christie’s New York is proud to announce its inaugural AI art auction, Augmented Intelligence, the first ever artificial intelligence-dedicated sale at a major auction house.
Running from 20 February to 5 March with a concurrent exhibition at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries, the online sale will include highly sought-after works by AI artists spanning the establishment and new guard, such as Refik Anadol, Claire Silver, Sasha Stiles, Pindar Van Arman, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Harold Cohen and more. The sale also showcases a selection of artists from NVIDIA’s AI Art Gallery.
‘AI technology is undoubtedly the future, and its connection to creativity will become increasingly important,’ says Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s Director of Digital Art.
So, what is AI art?
In simple terms, artificial intelligence art (AI art) is any form of art that has been created or enhanced with AI tools. Many artists use the term ‘collaboration’ when describing their process with AI.
But given the boundless possibilities unlocked by this technology — and in the context of museum-worthy fine art, the arena in which many AI contemporary fine artists are now shown — it’s also prudent to address what quality AI art is not. AI art of this high calibre is not a shortcut to productivity, artistry at warp speed. ‘AI is not a substitute for human creativity. It enhances the human spectrum of creativity,’ says Sales Giles. ‘It’s about employing technology to push what is possible, exploring what is achievable outside of, but not separate from, human agency.’
AI art has emerged as a phenomenon in which artificial intelligence helps wield the brush, compose the melody, even direct the narrative. For example, using tools like DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, creators collaborate with algorithms or create their own neural networks — computational systems based on the human brain that recognise patterns within data sets — to create art that’s as intriguing as it is disruptive.
Sasha Stiles (b.1980), WORDS CAN COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS, executed in 2024. AI poem sculpture, black matte steel and LED neon lightbox with dimmer and remote control. Diameter: 36 in (91.4 cm). Estimate: $10,000-15,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
The hand of the artist
Contrary to how it’s often described, AI is inherently human. ‘Code can be considered a type of craft,’ says Sebastian Sanchez, Christie’s Manager of Digital Art. There are always hands involved in some shape or form, although not necessarily in the traditional sense as with painting or draftsmanship. Engineers program networks, and some artists use pre-existing tools, generating art through refined text prompts.
What’s more, the variety of styles within AI art is testimony to the great breadth in character and approach of the artists involved. For example, Singapore-based Niceaunties, an architect by trade, uses AI tools to explore universal themes including aging, liberation, environmental consciousness, beauty and joy. More a narrative storyteller than a ‘techie’ or trained coder, her work has been shown at institutions including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen. ‘We are always proud to debut new works and new artists,’ says Sanchez. ‘We gave Niceaunties her debut at a major auction house with us here at Christies, and since then her market has grown steadily and she has been included in important museum shows.’
Niceaunties, 5 Mins To Opening, minted on 16 December 2024. Single-channel video. 00:00:53 seconds. Estimate: $12,000-18,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
For these artists, AI is inherent, integral, essential to their work. Artist Claire Silver notes that she nor AI alone could make her work, which is loosely inspired aesthetically by anime, and that it’s the collaboration which bares the fruit. Poet and artist Sasha Stiles created an alter-ego trained on her poetry, with whom she now collaborates. Stiles’s work Cursive Binary comes to Christie’s as part of Augmented Intelligence. ‘A long time ago, a poem was a method for storing memory,' Stiles shared at Christie’s 2024 Art + Tech Summit in New York. ‘I think about AI as an evolution of our trajectory through this arc of language.’
Claire Silver, daughter, minted on 4 February 2025. PNG (9,260 x 5,190 pixels). Estimate: $40,000-60,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
Creating art history in real time
While radically contemporary in many ways, the genesis of AI art and human-machine collaboration as we know it today can be traced back several decades. In the 1960s, Harold Cohen developed AARON, an early AI program that reinterpreted his colorful sketches. Cohen was recently the subject of a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2024. Charles Csuri, a peer of Cohen who was also experimenting in the 1960s, utilised sine curve functions to distort drawings of faces — often his own.
Harold Cohen (1928-2016), Untitled (i23-3758), 1987. Ink on paper. Paper size: 22¼ x 30 in (56.5 x 76.2 cm). Estimate: $10,000-15,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
Pindar Van Arman, who cites Cohen as an inspiration and mentor, began working with robots in 2017 with his Emerging Faces series. The upcoming sale includes a Van Arman work comprising nine unique canvases from this series, which are amongst the first paintings autonomously created by neural networks combined with robotics, a significant milestone in AI-generated art.
Charles Csuri (1922 - 2022), Bspline Men, 1966. Ink on paper, IMB 7094 and Cal Comp drum plotter. 30⅞ x 57 ⅝ in (78.4 x 146.4 cm). Estimate: $55,000-65,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
‘We were exploring AI and blockchain in 2018,’ says Sanchez, noting Christie’s held its inaugural Art + Tech Summit in London that year, at which Christie’s gave away to 300 attendees a card to claim an AI generated nude portrait by the artist Robbie Barrat. At the time, only 36 of these were claimed, as NFT’s had not yet reached mainstream conversation, but several of these went on to fetch six figures. The remaining ones becoming known at the ‘Lost Robbies.’ Now, an Infinite Skull work — a collaboration between Barrat and French painter Ronan Barrot — will be offered as part of Augmented Intelligence.
Robbie Barrat (b. 1999) and Ronan Barrot (b.1973), Infinite Skull #21, executed in 2018. UV print on plexiglass. 7 ⅘ x 7 ⅘ in (20 x 20 cm). Estimate: $10,000-15,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
Also in 2018, Christie’s became the first auction house to sell an AI-generated artwork when Portrait of Edmond de Belamy by the collective Obvious realised $432,500. The print on canvas was created using a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), an AI system widely used between 2016 and 2020. Trained on a vast database of classic paintings, the GAN synthesised new imagery, offering an early glimpse into the potential of neural networks in art.
In 2022, AI art experienced a breakthrough into the mainstream when Refik Anadol installed Unsupervised at MoMA, which drew tens of thousands of visitors, captivated by its vast scale and highly dynamic generative motion, and was extended through 2023 due to its popularity. Earlier that year, his groundbreaking work, Living Architecture: Casa Batlló, during Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale in May for $1,380,000, with a portion of proceeds donated towards causes supporting neurodiverse children and adults. Now, Machine Hallucinations - ISS Dreams, a data set of 1.2 million images captured from the International Space Stations comes to Augmented Intelligence, continuing Anadol’s distinctive and unique approach.
Refik Anadol, Machine Hallucinations - ISS Dreams - A, 2021. Video, AI-driven data painting, custom software. Dimensions variable; 00:16:00 minutes (3,840 x 2,160 pixels). Estimate: $150,000-200,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
In July 2023, Christie’s presented Future Frequencies: Explorations in Generative Art and Fashion in collaboration with Gucci. The sale featured 21 digital works by notable artists such as Claire Silver, Emi Kusano, Emily Xie, William Mapan, Zach Lieberman, Botto, Helena Sarin and DRAUP, amongst others.
‘In 2024, the big trend was AI video,’ says Sanchez, noting tools like OpenAI, Sora and DALL-E. Artists and tools developed together, leading to some of the most hyper-contemporary art of that time.
Keke, Golden Breath, (i) Acrylic and oil on linen; 19 7/10 x 23⅗ in (50 × 60 cm). Executed in 2025 (ii) JPEG; 8,000 x 6,613 pixels, minted on 4 February 2025. Estimate: $15,000-20,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
In 2025, AI experts are focussing on AI agents — autonomous systems capable of making independent decisions. Outside of art, these agents are used to automate tasks across a wide range of industries. One work in the upcoming auction is created by Keke, an AI agent that acts as an autonomous artist, creating her own works based on a predetermined logic.
AI art is so fascinating, because you see artists bending the technology to their will. They’re putting restraints in place, building parameters and then letting AI run free within those boundaries.
— Sebastian Sanchez, Christie’s Digital Art Manager
The names to know now
Washington-based roboticist Pindar Van Arman is one of the pioneers of AI art, known for his experiments with early versions of bitGANS to create painterly works, notably his Emerging Faces series from 2017. In it, two AI agents work simultaneously on a series of portraits. One uses generative AI to imagine and paint faces; the other stops the process once it recognises the image as a human face. Now very hard to come by, a work that includes nine canvases from the series will be offered in Augmented Intelligence. ‘It’s very humanistic,’ says Sanchez, of the work represented in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The artist attributes his algorithm to conversations he had with Harold Cohen, whom Van Arman calls a ‘pioneer in artificial creativity’.
Pindar Van Arman, (b. 1974), Emerging Faces, 2017. Acrylic on canvas. Each: 11 x 14 in (27.9 x 35.6 cm); Overall: 37 x 46 in (93.9 x 116.8 cm). Estimate: $180,000-250,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
British-born Harold Cohen (1928 – 2016) attended the prestigious Slade School of Art in London before moving to California, where in the late 1960s he developed AARON, credited as the first and one of the most complex computer software programs for creating works of art. Following his recent Whitney exhibition, a highly sought-after 1987 work by Cohen’s AARON will be available in Augmented Intelligence.
Berlin-based Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, the first digital artists ever to be invited by OpenAI to explore text-to-image prompts via DALL-E, recently opened a solo show at the Serpentine in London. They were commissioned by the Whitney to create the interactive xhairymutantx, the only AI work in the 2024 Whitney Biennale — the very one coming to Christie’s this February. While American Herndon and British Dryhurst are the living, breathing artists behind the work, the character of Holly Herndon also has a perennial internet presence in their often-musical works.
Holly Herndon (b. 1980) & Mat Dryhurst (b. 1984), Embedding Study 1 & 2 (from the xhairymutantx series), minted on 5 February 2025. Thermal dye diffusion transfer prints. Each: 47¾ × 71⅝ in. (119 × 180 cm). Embedding Study #1: PNG (1,418 x 2,126 pixels); Embedding Study #2: PNG (1,772 x 2,660 pixels). Estimate: $70,000-90,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online
Alexander Reben’s work pushes boundaries of AI and autonomy. As Open AI’s first artist in residence, he trialled an early version of text-to-video tool Sora. The MIT-trained roboticist creates systems that allow artworks to be made almost entirely independently. His latest work, merging generative AI and live performance, will employ a monumental oil painting robot that paints the canvas each time a new bid is placed on the work live during the auction. ‘Even in this example, the work can’t begin without the influence of a human hand making a gesture,’ points out Sanchez.
Alexander Reben (b. 1985), Untitled Robot Painting, 2025. Acrylic on canvas. 120 x 144in. Estimate: $100-$1,728,000. Offered in Augmented Intelligence from 20 February to 5 March 2025 at Christie’s Online. Sample generative artwork shown.
Constantly evolving
While the history of AI art is only just beginning, the density and variety of the field is growing exponentially as the technology evolves. The Augmented Intelligence auction demonstrates this, from robotic creations and interactive works, to text-to-image models, and GANs, and the work of autonomous artists like Keke.
Artists collaborate with AI in their art in a myriad of ways — resulting in works that range from paintings to sculptures to video art and more. ‘AI art is about a new collaborative artistic process with technology. Most of the time, just looking at an artwork, you won’t immediately recognize artificial intelligence’
AI art is about a new artistic process, one that happens in collaboration with technology. — Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s Director of Digital Art
A new collector language
Collectors are now revisiting early examples, such as the 2017 Van Arman series, which represents one of the first instances of AI-generated art using neural networks and robotics. Online resources have emerged, cataloguing the evolution of AI art and allowing the community to document and define its own artistic history. This social art history is unfolding in real time, still in its nascent stages and yet to be fully captured, but it is steadily beginning to formalise. ‘Everything moves very quickly, and there is a new paradigm every week,’ says Sanchez, who with Sales Giles is surveying the landscape constantly. ‘We’re excited by artists who have done deep research, whose work is grounded, and part of a consistent practice, not a one-off. We’re always looking for something we’ve never seen before.’