Christie’s first-ever sale dedicated entirely to artworks created with AI totaled $728,784, far exceeding its initial estimate of $600,000 (all prices include fees).
Titled “Augmented Intelligence,” the 34-lot online auction concluded on March 5th and was led by Refik Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations – ISS Dreams – A (2021), which sold for $277,200 against a high estimate of $200,000. The work, billed by the auction house as a “dynamic painting,” resembles a wave of colored particles moving across the canvas, and is generated by a dataset of more than 1.2 million images taken from the International Space Station. Part of the artist’s project “Machine Hallucinations,” the work takes an algorithmic approach to questions of space and nature.
Cryptocurrency payments were accepted for the majority of lots in the sale, which achieved an 88% sell-through rate. The auction house also reported that some 37% of registrants to the sale were “completely new to Christie’s” and 48% of bidders were millennials and Gen Z.
“With this project, our goal was to spotlight the brilliant creative voices pushing the boundaries of technology and art,” said Nicole Sales Giles, VP and director of digital art sales at Christie’s. “We also hoped collectors and the wider community would recognize their influence and significance in today’s artistic landscape. The results of this sale confirmed that they did. Witnessing such overwhelming public support for this auction has been truly inspiring.”
The sale proceeded amid fierce opposition from artists who claimed that AI models exploit human creativity. An open letter issued last month called for Christie’s to cancel the sale, arguing that “these models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them.” The letter has since attracted more than 6,000 signatories.
In response, Christie’s issued a statement to ARTnews noting that “the artists represented in this sale have strong, existing multidisciplinary art practices, some recognized in leading museum collections. The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work.”
Following the leading Anadol lot, the top five works from the sale were as follows:
- Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s Embedding Study 1 & 2 (from the xhairymutantx series) (2024) sold for $94,500 against a high estimate of $90,000.
- Charles Csuri’s Bspline Men (1966) sold for $50,400 against a high estimate of $65,000.
- Claire Silver’s daughter (2025) sold for $44,100 against a high estimate of $60,000.
- Jesse Woolston’s The Dissolution Waiapu (2025) sold for $40,320 against a high estimate of $50,000.
The sale confirms the continued demand for AI artworks at auction. Last November, Sotheby’s sold AI God. Portrait of Alan Turing (2024) for $1.08 million, an artwork that was made using AI. The result marked the first time that a painting by a humanoid robot had been sold at auction.
