“Haunting” robot-made portray of Alan Turing anticipated to fetch at the least $120K at public sale

What simply occurred? A chunk of art work created by a humanoid robotic is ready to go underneath the hammer on the prestigious Sotheby’s public sale home later this month, and it is anticipated to fetch at the least $120,000. Titled AI God, the 7-foot-tall piece depicts the late pc pioneer Alan Turing, whose groundbreaking work within the Fifties laid the muse for the sector of synthetic intelligence.

It is a becoming topic for a portray by Ai-Da, hailed because the world’s first ultra-realistic robotic artist. Turing famously predicted in 1952 that it could take at the least 100 years for a machine to cross his Turing check.

The robotic’s title is a nod to Ada Lovelace, the mathematician considered the primary pc programmer. Ai-Da has been turning heads and making headlines since her debut in 2019. Together with her practical but uncanny human face, art-student stylish outfits, bob-style haircut, and bionic fingers able to portray, she seems like one thing straight out of a Black Mirror episode.

Nonetheless, Ai-Da may be very actual – the product of a collaboration between British artwork supplier Aidan Meller, robotic makers Engineered Arts, and researchers from Oxford College.

She works by “watching” the canvas by way of cameras in her eyes, which feed knowledge into AI algorithms that information her robotic fingers with exact actions. Her approach is exclusive as nicely: slightly than utilizing lengthy brushstrokes, she delicately paints tiny traces that progressively kind a whole image.

To date, Ai-Da has created a number of portraits, together with these of the late Queen Elizabeth II, music icons like Paul McCartney, and celebrities resembling Billie Eilish. She additionally paints summary artwork. Nonetheless, it is her Turing portrait that has garnered essentially the most consideration, having been exhibited at a UN summit earlier this yr and described as “haunting.”

Artwork is not her solely expertise. Ai-Da additionally has primary language skills, due to an inside AI mannequin.

In accordance with Meller, the aim of Ai-Da is to focus on the “tensions” in our more and more AI-driven world, questioning the boundaries between digital and bodily, human and machine.

“Within the time of accelerating use of AI, on-line avatars, AI chatbots, Alexa and Siri, Ai-Da as a robotic artist is acutely related,” he wrote on Ai-Da’s web site.

After all, Ai-Da lacks self-awareness, so she’s unaware of the staggering worth her Turing portrait is predicted to fetch. But her lack of consciousness underscores that Turing’s prediction about clever machines has, up to now, held true.

Picture credit score: Ai-Da Robot Studio/PA