Christie’s

Christie’s, founded in London in 1766, is one of the world’s two dominant auction houses. It has repeatedly played midwife to new art markets — and no institution has done more to put a price on machine-made art. In October 2018 it sold Edmond de Belamy, a GAN-generated portrait by the French collective Obvious, for $432,500 against a $10,000 estimate — the first AI artwork sold at a major auction. Three years later it sold Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days for $69.3 million, legitimizing digital art’s market at a stroke.

Augmented Intelligence

In February 2025 Christie’s announced Augmented Intelligence, the first major-house auction devoted entirely to AI art — 34 lots spanning 1960s algorithmic pioneers to contemporary figures like Refik Anadol and Holly Herndon. An open letter gathered roughly 6,500 signatures demanding cancellation, arguing the works were built on models trained on copyrighted art without license and that the sale rewarded “mass theft” of human artists’ work.

Christie’s proceeded anyway, countering that its consigned artists had strong existing practices — many in museum collections — and were using AI to extend, not replace, human agency. The sale closed on March 5, 2025 at $728,784, beating its $600,000 estimate, with Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations — ISS Dreams — A topping the sale at $277,200. The house has treated the controversy itself as evidence that AI art has arrived as a market category.