Similar reasoning to @MayMeta . Hundreds of artworks are sold a year for more than 10M. The highest selling AI artwork so far was sold for half a million dollars.

@Nikola So only two degrees of magnitude to go! I don't know the exact number, but my guess is only maybe 50-100 HUMAN ARTISTS have created a picture that has sold for more than $10mm. It is possible that someone might want to make a statement about what THEY consider AI art to be worth, but there is zero chance the art community will agree with that person so it won't happen in a respected auction house and the buyer won't be Ken Griffin or a gallery or museum or some other serious collector. It will be a crypto-billionaire who then creates NFTs blah blah scam blah blah uninteresting blah blah. Just my personal take as an amateur painter and professional AI skeptic.

@Nikola Only 3 living artists have had their paintings sell for more than $10MM at auction. Jasper Johns, David Hockney and Gerhardt Richter.

@BTE How long ago was that? (thinking about inflation-adjusted numbers)

@Nikola Banksy got close at $9.8MM in 2020.

@Nikola This does not include Beeple's $60MM+ NFT I guess but that is not a painting but rather a collage of photos. I also didn't count Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons sculptures which fetched tens of millions at auction.

@firstuserhere I guess once you hit $10MM your value instantly skyrockets to $100MM+.

@firstuserhere All relevant sales have happened in this century it looks like. They don't seem to inflation adjust art sale records.

AI generated art will be very accessible and cheap, so I expect people to just make their own art rather than buy it

Until AI start picking up brushes and putting paint to canvas this is NOT happening. A digital piece isn’t going to be on the block at a major auction house.

@BTE this is already happening, robots can hold brushes y'know: 1, 2, 3.

To my knowledge the current record a portrait called “Edmond de Belamy” sold for $432k in 2018: https://www.aiplusinfo.com/blog/most-expensive-piece-of-ai-art/
I see no reason why stable diffusion and midjourney hype wont push this number 1.4 orders of magnitude.

@MayMeta Sure, but the only interesting thing about that picture is that it is signed with the algorithm used to create it. I suppose it’s certainly possible that an AI will pioneer a new style or movement, but that will probably require it to be able to have a point of view and lived experiences that will resonate widely and inspire deep feeling. That will necessarily take time but once AGI is fully embraced and assimilated culturally yes I think this is possible, even likely.

@BTE I'd say that it's not necessary.

Here's a hypothetical plan that someone might follow: Devise some interesting and inspiring prompts, give them to midjourney, run A/B tests on the web to find which outputs are the most compelling, give those as the input to a painter robot, release those paintings as a series, make them artificially rare ofc, so don't paint thousands of paintings, develop a "style", give the robot an interesting look, give a couple of interviews with the robot speaking ChatGPT-generated lines about their "vision", and finally, paint something scandalous and BIG. Something like "For the first time ever I've decided to use so much black paint and dark colors to signal my deep fear of a potential upcoming conflict between humanity and AI. The truth is, I'm scared as much as you are. I want to continue existing, perceiving, creating, inspiring others!" or some other bullshit, run A/B tests on that too for good measure before giving the interviews, and boom: there are tens of articles about your "creative robot" and the auction houses fight to sell your paintings.

No point of view or lived experiences involved. Just art business, with a little bit of hype/fraud.

Since 2017 there were at least 7 NFTs, 2 photographs, and around 150-600 paintings that were sold for >$10M. I think it's very likely that there will be at least one AI painting sold for that price in the following 6.5 years.