Humanoid robot artist makes history with €1.22 million auction sale of Alan Turing portrait

An AI robot’s painting of Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, has made history, selling for a staggering $1.3 million (€1.22 million) at auction.

Sotheby’s reported that the digital artwork, titled A.I. God, received 27 bids and its sale well-exceeded expectations. Initially, it was expected to fetch between $120,000 (€113,000) and $180,000 (€169,000).

The piece, created by Ai-Da - the world’s first lifelike humanoid robot artist - marks a historic milestone as the first artwork by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction.

The auction house says that the sale "launches a new frontier in the global art market, establishing the auction benchmark for an artwork by a humanoid robot".

Before the auction took place, Euronews Culture spoke with Ai-Da and her creator Aidan Meller over an online video call: "Alan Turing was a highly gifted mathematician and original thinker. And I’m glad this artwork, which was displayed at the United Nations in Geneva, brings focus to his contributions" said the humanoid robot.

Ai-Da who was created in 2019 and is able to draw and paint thanks to high-tech cameras in her eyes, complex AI algorithms and a specially-designed robotic arm. Her work has gained global attention, being exhibited at prestigious venues such as the Venice Biennale, Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, and even headlining a solo show at London's Design Museum in 2021.

Ai-Da is unable to create art without human involvement. Each of her artworks starts with an initial conversation using her AI language model; for example, she suggested Alan Turing for a portrait. After being shown a photo of Turing, she produced a series of preliminary sketches and paintings on A3 canvases. These sketches were then combined to create a