Ai-Da. Or the intelligence of marketing in the contemporary art market.

Yet another media one-upmanship around a caricature of a work that is overrated and devoid of interest (1). From these latest articles on the ‘miracle’ and his only work sold for 1 million US$ (2), we should keep only the essential. 

Firstly, despite the flood of articles presenting him as the inventor of the robot, Mr Aidan Meller (3) is not. He is not an engineer, nor is he a designer. He is a contemporary art dealer who has built up a solid network of clients in the UK. many years, he owned an art gallery in Oxford and London. His reputation in this market is well established. But it was he who came up with the most recent idea in marketing (the contemporary art market).

The real designers are in fact a design office specialising in bots (4). There's nothing exceptional about them, and AI-DA is still linked to the many constraints of machines: the need for electricity, a team to ‘guide’ it, updated algorithms, etc. Nothing extraordinary. A PC with arms and legs, so to speak. 

The idea of an autonomous mechanical and electronic life is, for the moment, a dream. And artificial intelligence is a marketing bluff that sells (5). AI-DA would simply not be able to paint without the help of an army of technicians, and its painting would not have been sold without the vast network of its ‘inventor’. Mr Meller is a marketing genius, like many contemporary art dealers. Meller and his clients are more in the same contemporary vein as Pierre Brassau with his chimpanzee paintings (6). And their customers are of the same artistic level. Then there are the technology enthusiasts, who will believe in the miracle, and the media, who, as usual or often, will write anything about anything. 

Embun.

Notes.

1: https://fortune.com/europe/2024/11/08/portrait-ai-robot-ai-da-sells-for-1-million/

2: https://www.ai-darobot.com/exhibitions

3: https://www.frieze.com/article/ugly-objectification-behind-worlds-first-robot-artist

4: https://engineeredarts.co.uk/

5: https://jdanielsawyer.substack.com/p/the-big-ai-bluff

6: https://www.out-the-box.fr/pierre-brassau-le-chimpanze-qui-trompa-le-monde-de-lart/