A group of 5,000 plus artists organized an open letter demanding that Christie’s cancel its auction involving AI artworks from the artists Refik Anadol, Holly Herron & Matt Dryhurst, Robbie Barrot and Ronan Barrot, Harold Cohen, Pindar Van Arman, Claire Silver, and others. (Update: we found the webpage listing all 34 lots.)
Without identifying any specific artists or artworks, the letter demands Christie’s to cancel its planned sale starting February 20. Instead, the letter broadly asserts: “Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license. These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them.”
Looking at the websites of Refik Anadol, Holly Herron & Matt Dryhurst, Robbie Barrot and Ronan Barrot, Harold Cohen, Pindar Van Arman, and Claire Silver, it’s unclear whether any of these artists actually are “using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license,” as the letter broadly asserts. It even looks like that at least some, if not all, of these artists, such as Refik Anadol, and Herron and Dryhurst create their own AI models.
One response to “Cancel culture strikes Christie’s auction of AI art”
“create their own AI models” should be met with skepticism. Quite frequently this only refers to a LoRA, which then still has to be used in conjunction with an actually usable large model (which may or may not “be trained on copyrighted work without a license”)
It is however all too familiar to see public exposition of A.I. be met with outrage.
Indeed, any platform that allows or even requires that the use of A.I. be disclosed, something that is often presented in conjunction with the ability to *filter out* A.I. material so that those who do not wish to content with A.I. results, is frequently met with those who would use that facility specifically to express that outrage even where it is unwarranted.
A recent case on the game distribution platform Steam illustrates this aptly; a reviewer claimed not to have read that A.I. was used in the production of a title, but rather than request a refund (despite their own inattention being the cause), they chose to write a negative review specifically to target the use of A.I.
While I sympathize with the artists, it is thus important that Christie’s meets this outrage head-on and cultivate an environment for discussion, rather than bow down to pressure.