Over the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a growing part of our society and culture. At this point, it’s moved far beyond being a gimmick, and now companies rush to find its real-world utility and financial benefit. Christie’s is just one of those entities that sees the possibilities in AI art and its money-making potential, with them running the Augmented Intelligence online sale, running between 20 February and 5 March, Christie's first-ever sale dedicated solely to AI art. 

However, this has not gone without controversy, as over 6,200 individuals have signed an open letter calling on Christie’s to cancel the sale. The signatories of the letter protesting the sale accuse the programs that have developed the AI art for the sale of stealing copyrighted work by artists for their image generation, meaning that by association the upcoming Christie’s sale exploits the work of artists who’ve had their work’s copyright protections violated.

Christie’s office in New York where this AI art sale is being run from

The sale, being run by Christie’s Digital Art & NFTs department, will feature art from pioneers in the AI art space such as Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Alexander Reben, and Claire Silver. Of the more than 20 lots on sale, around a quarter are purely digital works in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), with the rest being prints, screens, sculptures, paintings, and prints.

Most interesting of all is a work by American artist, researcher, and roboticist Alexander Reben titled Untitled Robot Painting. According to Christie’s press release, while the works are featured at their New York site, Untitled Robot Painting will be created live. Starting at US$100, every time a bid is made for the work proportional to the size of each bid, a robot with a code specially written by Reben will paint a bit of the lot live, in what Christie’s says offers collectors a new way to interact with the evolution of art. 

Fitting with the sale, Christie’s will accept digital currency for 93% of all lots being sold.

Alexander Reben (b.1985) | Untitled Robot Painting (2025) | To be sold by Christie’s New York, starting bid: US$100 | A rendition of how this lot will work and what it could look like as bidding progresses

Claire Silver | daughter | To be sold by Christie’s New York, estimate: US$40,000-60,000
 

While such a sale is certainly rather progressive, this being Christie’s first auction to feature only AI-generated art, it has inevitably run into problems, as all AI currently works is that it has to be trained on human-created artwork. The concern is that the artwork that AI is trained on is copyrighted, and the AI companies that build these models are essentially stealing the work of artists to train their technology. 

This alleged copyright infringement issue is at the core of the protest against Christie’s Augmented Intelligence sale. To the artists signing onto the letter protesting this sale by Christie's, their main argument is that Christie's would be profiting off the unauthorized usage of copyrighted artist work, which has been included in models that generate AI art, violating copyright law.To quote the letter in protest to the sale, "Your [Christie's] support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies’ mass theft of human artists’ work."

This is made even more concerning as there is an ongoing lawsuit by artists against two of the largest AI art companies, Stability AI and Midjourney, claiming that they are directly infringing upon the copyrights of artists whose styles have been used to generate art by these platforms.

Ed Newton-Rex the CEO of Fairly Trained, a non-profit that certifies the fairness of AI data sets, tweeted, “Why are Christie’s condoning these models by helping sell these works for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, when the models are directly leading to the impoverishment of so many artists that they’ve stolen from?”

Newton-Rex also stated that when looking at the lots on offer, he thinks, “It’s likely that at least 9 or so of the works being sold use models trained on copyrighted work without permission.” He further added that he’d “like to see Christie’s remove works built using models that exploit other artists’ works without permission.”

A tweet by American NFT maker and seller Beeple, real name Minke Winkelmann, is critical of the art sale and AI’s usage of human-generated work

Artists both outside the sale and participating in it have weighed in with comments regarding the controversy. Beeple, an NFT maker, seems to be rather critical of this issue in his tweet with an image of a robot with the OpenAI logo reading an edited and censored version of the protest letter to Christie’s with a human on the leash. Beeple himself is somewhat adjcent this saga, as he created the first NFT ever sold by Christie’s, Everydays: the First 5000 Days, which is also the most expensive NFT ever sold at US$69.3 million.

Another NFT artist, Jack Butcher, who started the protest letter, minted it into an NFT as a way to make the complaint a fixed and tokenized part of the marketplace that this auction has sought to enter. These voices join an ever-growing group of creatives that have been consistently decrying generative AI art as “a major, unjust threat.”

Refik Anadol (b.1985) | Machine Hallucinations – ISS Dreams – A | To be sold by Christie’s New York

Holly Herndon (b.1980) and Mat Dryhurst (b.1984) | Embedding Study 1&2 (from the xhairmyutantx series) | To be sold by Christie’s New York, estimate: US$70,000 - 90,000
 

For their part, some of the artists participating in the Christie’s auction have been defending their artwork and actions. Refik Anadol, creator of Machine Hallucinations, has insisted that the majority of the artists participating in the auction have developed their datasets and models and that the letter’s claims are “factually incorrect.” He further rejected the criticism by labeling it as “lazy critic practices and doomsday hysteria.”.

Most combative is probably Mat Dryhurst, who, when speaking to The Guardian, rejected the claims of the protest letter, stating, “It is not illegal to use any model to create artwork. I resent that an important debate that should be focused on companies and state policy is being focused on artists grappling with the technology of our time.”

Refik Anadol is one of the artists whose work is on sale at Christie's and a staunch supporter of AI art