AI ‘artist’ pulls in millions — and may ‘create more interesting work than humans,’ co-creator says

Domo arigato, Mr. Botto.

The next artistic masterpiece may be more machine than man: An artificial intelligence design program called Botto has sold computerized works for megabucks and could revolutionize the creative space.

Since its creation in 2021, Botto has created more than 150 works of various disciplines that have cumulatively raked in over $5 million at auction, CNBC reported.

“The recent advancements in artificial intelligence, deep learning and data analysis make me confident that in the near future machine artists’ will be able to create more interesting work than humans,” one of Botto’s creators, German artist Mario Klingemann, declared online.

Co-creator Simon Hudson said Botto has two goals.

“It’s first to become recognized as an artist, and I think second is to become a successful artist,” he told CNBC, noting that the latter could mean a “kind of deep impact on people” through commercial, financial, cultural and spiritual success.

Like other Gen AI image programs such as DALL-E, Botto works off prompts — but with a twist, according to Hudson. It was first given very loose guidance “and it started by combining random words, phrases, and symbols … to produce images,” he explained.

Botto renders 70,000 randomized works weekly, with 350 presented to a “collective” of 5,000 people — known as a “decentralized autonomous organization” — who then vote on an image to sell.

“With Botto, it strips away this myth of the lone genius artist and shows how artwork is really a collective … meaning-making process,” said Hudson. “And when you have a deluge of AI-generated content, that’s going to be even more important of a process.”

Any member of the public may also vote on the works to proceed to auction.

Hudson also explained that Botto’s public appreciation has been a work in progress. In its early phases, two works listed between $13,000 and $15,000 did not sell at auction.

However, according to CNBC, those same images went for $276,000 in October.

“Certainly, Botto right now is a collaboration between machine and crowd,” said Hudson. “The human hands are certainly there, but the setup is such that Botto has maintained the central role of authorship.”