An unsettling portrait created by artificial intelligence (AI) made a historic appearance on the auction block at Christie’s in New York City last week. It is the first artwork created by an algorithm to be offered for auction in the world of fine art.

The creepy-looking painting of a fictitious man in a dark frockcoat left the auction block at Christie’s for a whopping US$432,500 on Oct. 25 in New York City.

The portrait — designed in the “Old Master” style reminiscent of European fine artists from centuries ago — only partially fills the canvas, leaving empty space around the central figure. It appears to represent a man with a blurred face, dressed in clothing similar to that worn by subjects painted by the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn in the 17th century.

The AI that generated the image had human programmers — a Parisian art collective called Obvious, Christie’s reported. Their collaboration, titled “Portrait of Edmond De Belamy,” is part of a series of paintings of the fictional Belamy family and was expected to fetch US$7,000 to US$10,000, according to Christie’s.

To generate the portrait, the Obvious team first fed the neural network a diet of 15,000 images painted between the 14th and 20th centuries, to train it to recognize visual elements in fine art, Obvious artist Hugo Caselles-Dupre told Christie’s. The algorithm that eventually created an original image had two parts that worked against each other, called the Generator and the Discriminator.

“The Generator makes a new image based on the set, then the Discriminator tries to spot the difference between a human-made image and one created by the Generator. The aim is to fool the Discriminator into thinking that the new images are real-life portraits. Then, we have a result,” Caselles-Dupre told Christie’s.

The final image was then inkjet-printed on canvas and framed, according to Obvious. At the bottom of the portrait is a mathematical formula representing the algorithm that created it, Obvious artists wrote on the collective’s website.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【算法】suànfǎ algorithm a set of rules to be followed in calculations, especially by a computer

【使回忆起】shǐ huíyìqǐ reminiscent tending to recall or suggest something in the past

上周，一幅具有颠覆意义的肖像画出现在纽约佳士得拍卖行的拍卖台上，此举颇有历史意义。这幅画作由人工智能创作，是艺术界首次拍卖由算法创作的艺术品。

这幅画画的是一位身穿黑色双排扣长礼服的虚构人物，看上去有点诡异。10月25日，在纽约佳士得拍卖行拍出了43.25万美元（约合300万元人民币）的价格。

这幅画的颜料仅仅覆盖了部分画布，主体人像周围留出了大片空白。画作遵循数百年前的欧洲古典美术风格，似乎描绘了一名五官模糊的男子，其穿着的外衣类似于17世纪荷兰画家伦勃朗·梵·莱茵笔下人物的穿着。

据佳士得介绍，创作这幅肖像画的人工智能依靠了人类程序员——一个名为“显而易见”的巴黎艺术团体。按照佳士得的说法，这幅画题为《埃德蒙·德·贝拉米像》，是虚构的贝拉米家族系列画作中的一件，原本估价7000至10000美元。

“显而易见”团队的艺术家雨果·卡塞列斯-迪普雷告诉佳士得拍卖行，为生成这幅肖像画，他们首先将15000幅14至20世纪作品的图像输入一个神经网络，训练它辨认艺术品中的视觉元素。据介绍，最终生成原创画作的算法由两个相互矛盾的部分组成，分别被称作“‘生成者与“辨别者”。

卡塞列斯-迪普雷说：“‘生成者’依据作品库生成新图像，然后‘辨别者’会努力分辨人类画作与‘生成者’画作的区别。当‘辨别者’以为新图像就是真人创作的肖像画时，我们的作品就产生了。”

然后，创作出的成品会被喷墨打印机绘制在画布上，并装框成画。“显而易见”团队在其官方网站上介绍说，画的底端有一行数学公式，代表生成这幅画的算法。

(Chinadaily.com.cn)