Christie’s first-ever auction dedicated to artificial intelligence-generated art, Augmented Intelligence, concluded on Wednesday, March 5, exceeding estimates and, according to the auction house, drawing a fresh wave of collectors.
The sale amassed $728,784, the auction house said in a press release, outpacing its $600,000 projection.
Notably nearly half of bidders, 48 percent, identified themselves as Millennials or Gen Z, while 37 percent were first-time buyers at Christie’s. The highest-grossing lot, Machine Hallucinations – ISS Dreams – A by Refik Anadol, fetched $277,200—well above its $200,000 estimate.
Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst’s diptych Embedding Study 1 & 2 (from the xhairymutantx series) was another high point, bringing in $94,500 on an estimate of between $70,000 and $90,000. The sale, which made up of 34 lots, had an 82 percent sell through rate.
The auction proceeded despite fierce opposition from thousands of artists, who have argued AI models of exploiting human creativity without consent. An open letter, signed by nearly 4,000 individuals, urged Christie’s to cancel the event, alleging that AI-generated artworks rely on datasets trained using copyrighted material without compensation.
The letter ended with a plea: “Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies’ mass theft of human artists’ work. We ask that, if you have any respect for human artists, you cancel the auction.”
In response, the auction house defended the legitimacy of the featured artists, framing AI as a tool for creative expansion rather than replacement. “The artists represented in this sale have strong, existing multidisciplinary art practices, some recognized in leading museum collections,” the auction house told ARTnews at the time. “The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work.”
In the press release, Nicole Sales Giles, vice president and director of digital art sales, said “with this project, our goal was to spotlight the brilliant creative voices pushing the boundaries of technology and art. We also hoped collectors and the wider community would recognize their influence and significance in today’s artistic landscape. The results of this sale confirmed that they did.”
While some digital artists, including Beeple, championed the sale, others decried it as emblematic of the ongoing struggle between human artistry and machine-driven innovation. The results, however, suggest that AI art—controversial as it may be—is carving a firm place in the market.
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