AI art is artwork made with the help of AI models that generate or transform images, sound or video, usually guided by an artist's choices and data.
In plain words
Artists use models such as GANs and diffusion models to produce images from data or from text prompts, then choose and shape what the model makes. In 2018 Christie's sold a portrait made with a GAN for $432,500, the first time a major auction house offered art created by an algorithm. Christie's itself noted that such work leaves authorship an open question.
A quick example
For his work Unsupervised, the artist Refik Anadol trained a StyleGAN2 ADA model on subsets of the Museum of Modern Art's collection. The model produced abstract, shifting images whose shapes are dictated by the museum's archive.
Where you'll meet it
- Digital art, installations and illustration.
- Design and concept work using image generators.
Related
Sources
- DocsUnsupervised, Refik Anadol Studio · read 29 Sept 2026
- DocsIs artificial intelligence set to become art's next medium?, Christie's · read 29 Sept 2026
Checked by WhatIsAI against the sources above · 29 Sept 2026. Spotted an error? Report it.