This robot artist is more successful than you

Probably — we don’t want to make assumptions.

But unless you’ve sold $4m worth of artwork in the last few years, we’re right.

Botto, a “decentralized autonomous artist,” is putting all the art kids to shame with an extremely successful and lucrative career, per Wired:

• Botto was created in 2021 by German artist Mario Klingemann — who inaugurated AI artwork auctions at Sotheby’s with a $51k sale in 2019 — along with media entrepreneur and computer scientist partners. 
• The bot runs on an AI image generator, similar to Midjourney or Dall-E, with a “taste model” that selects the most aesthetically pleasing output images. 
• BottoDAO, a 15k-member community of Botto enthusiasts, shapes the taste model by voting on which works should be made into NFTs, and members can buy $Botto cryptocurrency to govern the system.

A solo exhibition at Sotheby’s in October earned Botto $350k+ in sales, bringing the artist’s earnings to ~$4m since 2021, according to its creators.

Botto gets creative 

After proving itself within the art market, Botto is now achieving something even more elusive: a personality.

BottoDAO is adding a modified version of Mistral’s open source large language model, and a knowledge base that will allow Botto to learn from its inputs and develop a personality and interests.

Its creators hope to eventually remove Botto’s safety guardrails (which prevent inappropriate imagery) to see what its true artistic expression might look like.

Where there’s a robot…

… there are ethical concerns. And Botto is no different.

• Human artists worry about a flood of AI-generated artists training on their work and competing with their livelihoods.
• Botto generates its luxury artworks by training on public work — something Klingemann does not see as plagiarism, per Wired.

You know what we’d really like to see? An AI art critic and an AI artist go head to head.