“The Threshold of Reverie”, a work by Botto.
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Generative artificial intelligence is making waves across industries and services Finance To Human Resources and spending on technology grows quickly.
And it’s no different in the art world – some artists take advantage of it help generate workand others are shocked at his abilities.
Now a new AI “artist” is causing a stir and raising key questions about the nature of art, its creation and ownership.
Botto, described on his website as a “decentralized autonomous artist,” has produced around 150 images or “works” that have collectively gained traction more than $5 million via auctions since 2021. Botto’s work is influenced by a group of people who vote each week on the painting that will be auctioned, and in turn have a say in what will emerge from it next.
“If Botto has a goal, so to speak, it is, one, to be recognized as an artist, and two, I think, to become a successful artist,” said Simon Hudson, Botto’s operator and co-head, in a video call with CNBC.
“You can look at a successful artist from many different perspectives: commercially successful, financially successful, culturally successful, spiritually successful – if they really have such a profound impact on people,” he said.
How botto works
Botto was designed by software collective ElevenYellow and German artist and computer programmer Mario Klingemann to generate images based on prompts generated by an algorithm.
It initially gave a general idea of what a prompt was, “without specific instructions on aesthetics, and started with combining random words, phrases and symbols… to create images,” Hudson told CNBC via email. Symbols such as plus and minus are used to increase or decrease emphasis, he said.
“Expose Stream,” an image generated by an AI called Botto. It was sold by Sotheby’s New York in October 2024 for $144,000.
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Every week, Botto generates about 70,000 images and presents 350 of them to a group of about 5,000 people known as BottoDAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). The BottoDAO votes on which individual image will be offered for sale Super rare non-fungible token auction platform.
Everyone can vote on it Pieces that Botto produces free, Hudson said. But to “fully participate in the economy,” people in the DAO buy Botto tokens and in return receive points that they can spend or vote on Botto’s production, Hudson said. “There is no such thing as passive income. You have to participate and help train Botto,” Hudson said.
Half of the auction proceeds go to voters in BottoDAO and the other half goes to Botto’s “treasury,” which pays for operating costs such as servers. One Botto token corresponds to one voting point, and the returns are prorated regardless of which image a person voted for.
Botto then uses the voting data to decide what to produce next, and the process continues.
“Machine artist”
Klingemann believes that “machine artists” will be able to create more interesting works than humans in the near future due to advances in AI and machine learning a post on his website. One of Klingemann’s pieces became the first AI-produced work sold by Sotheby’s in Europe. It fetched £40,000 at auction in 2019.
Images produced by Botto were exhibited for sale at Sotheby’s New York in October 2024.
Below | Sotheby’s
The value of Botto’s paintings appears to be increasing, Hudson said.
Two early paintings auctioned during a quiet period in the AI art market received a reserve price of around $13,000 to $15,000 from BottoDAO but did not sell. However, at an October auction at Sotheby’s New York, the same paintings – “Expose Stream” and “Exorbitant Stage” – sold for a total of $276,000. Hudson said. Botto is that too third highest seller by total sales on the SuperRare platform last year, as of December 12th.
Questions of authorship
Is Botto an artist in his own right? “It’s a perception thing,” Hudson said. “Certainly Botto is a collaboration between machine and mass at the moment. The human hands are certainly there, but the structure is such that Botto has retained the central role of authorship,” he said.
Botto has the potential to change the way art – and artists – are perceived, Hudson said. “With Botto, it dispels the myth of the lone genius artist and shows that works of art are in reality a collective…meaning-making process. And if there is a flood of AI-generated content, that will become an even more important process,” he said.
