The ultra-realistic robot/doll artist Ai-Da has made history at Sotheby’s by selling an AI-generated portrait of Alan Turing, the father of computer science. The picture is the first piece of art by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction, realising an excessive $1.08 million in New York on Thursday. This 2.2-meter portrait bears the title A.I. God: Portrait of Alan Turing. It exceeded estimates of between $120,000 and $180,000; there was fierce bidding on the work, with 27 bids taken before the hammer fell.
Already internationally known, Ai-Da is the first AI-generated artwork to be featured in a major auction—a new landmark in AI-driven manipulation that raises many questions about shifting and blurring lines: technology and identity, the very concept of art.
While the piece celebrates Turing’s legacy with artificial intelligence, it looks more deeply at broader issues of technological influence on human agency and creativity. For Ai-Da, a product of Turing’s vision, the artwork is both a personal homage and a more extraordinary philosophical statement on the potential of AI to shape and even disrupt traditional creative boundaries. This is not a great work of art and perhaps just a novelty. It is also questionable whether the market has been manipulated during this sale.
Earlier this year, AI God appeared at the United Nations AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva as part of a polyptych with Ada Lovelace, the 19th-century mathematician often regarded as the first computer programmer, alongside a self-portrait of Ai-Da herself. Merging the two figures, Ai-Da meets past and present AI visionaries through coherent ideas that have guided the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Ai-Da’s practice situates itself within a lineage of artists and thinkers from the last century who explored themes of control, suffering, and the fragile nature of man. The stylistic resonances from Picasso’s Guernica to Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios are wholesale in her fractured yet expressive aesthetic. She draws from a host of dystopian influences, the literary greats like Orwell and Huxley, whose works sound that ever-relevant warning against unchecked technological power. It’s a message dear to home, considering how Ai-Da was created in the first place to spur a discussion on AI ethics.
It will join works from established contemporary artists contextualising a shift: AI as both tool and creator. Ai-Da’s work questions what creativity means in the digital age and how far human identity extends as machines become increasingly integrated into our lives.
Ultimately, Ai-Da’s art invoices Turing’s legacy, giving us reasons to rethink our perception of technology’s role in shaping what and how we perceive, decide on, and create. As these lines continue to blur, Ai-Da takes a mirror to reflect on the complex future we are building—a future where artificial intelligence might not only assist human creativity but redefine it.