This is Not a Portrait
Edmond De Belamy / エドモンド・デ・ベラミー / is not a person.
But his portrait was made by an algorithm, and it sold for $432,000 at Christies making it the first piece of art made by artificial intelligence auctioned by a major house.
To make the painting, artist Pierre Fautrel ran 15,000 classic portraits through a learning algorithm developed by Google researcher Ian Goodfellow.
Once the software “understood the rules of portraiture” it generated a series of portraits by itself.
Edmond’s is one of a series of AI-envisioned portraits of the De Belamy family.
The gavel-price far exceeded pre-sale estimates of ~$10,000.
Snarksters will ask "Yes, but is it art?"
To which I answer "Art is that which surrounds us."
Vita brevis.
