Artificial intelligence already makes money selling its paintings

The system is fed with data of 15,000 portraits painted between the XIV and XX centuries

Last November, Leonardo Da Vinci's Salvatore Mundi broke all the records registered in the Art market. This Leonardo was sold in exchange for 450.3 million dollars in an auction that lasted 19 minutes.

The Leonardo, Picasso, Van Gogh and many more are pieces coveted by art collectors. Known names, which now adds a new very technological artist. His signature is mathematical and his paintings are very algorithmic.

The mentors of this painter are three French, Hugo Caselles-Dupré, Pierre Fautrel and Gauthier Vernier. These 25-year-olds sign part of Obvious, a collective that unites art with artificial intelligence.

These French mathematicians have developed a system based on a database that collects more than 15,000 portraits painted between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries. The new artist has created a series of eleven portraits drawn from artificial intelligence and algorithms.

"This new technology allows us to experiment with the notion of creativity for a machine and the parallelism with the role of the artist in the creation process," points out Hugo Caselles-Dupré, representative of Obvius.

One of his paintings, Portrait of Edmond de Belamy has become the first work of art created by an algorithm to be auctioned at the Christie's gallery. The Obvius group hopes to achieve 10,000 euros. A figure that the group already achieved with the sale of Le Comte de Belamy.

"The approach invites us to consider and evaluate the similarities and distinctions between the mechanics within the human brain, such as the creative process and those of an algorithm," explains Caselles-Dupré.

With this work, Obvious seeks to focus the viewer on the creative process, since an algorithm generally works by replicating human behavior, but "learns using its own path".