While we have heard a lot about NFT art cycles and the market boom surrounding digital collectibles like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club, and how they’ve jointly accumulated millions of dollars in sales in the past month alone, there seems to be another genre of the NFT art cycle right around the corner, and it’s been piquing the interests (and wallets) of collectors.
It’s art that’s created by machines, otherwise known as Artificial Intelligence Art (AIA).
A brief history:
Both AIA and NFTs have been tracking similar timelines, both bursting on the scene in 2013 – 2014 and seeing massive adoption peaking in 2019 – 2020.
- Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
Developed by researchers and artists of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), a class of machine learning invented by researcher Ian Goodfellow and colleagues in 2014, Artificial Intelligence Art (AIA) is an artistic niche developed from advances in computer vision and deep learning (a subset of machine learning). Since then, AIA has become a curious topic in the art realm, most notably during Christie’s 2019 Art + Tech Summit focused on AI revolution, and more recently with the rise of NFTs.
- Colored Coins
The first NFT conception came in the form of Colored coins in 2013. Made of small denominations of a bitcoin, Colored Coins was used to represent a multitude of assets and had multiple use cases e.g. property. Since then, NFTs have grown to encompass a whole plethora of use cases, and have become increasingly adopted into the mainstream.
Read about The rise of NFTs here: https://editorial.mintable.com/2021/09/11/the-rise-of-nfts-a-brief-history/
The path of AIA and NFTs
The combination of an avenue like NFT coming together with a tool like AI seems almost like a marriage in crypto-heaven.
One of the first and most significant AI and NFT projects to happen was the Alethea AI project, where artist Robert Alice teamed up with Alethea AI to create “the first intelligent nonfungible token” that they then auctioned off at Sotheby’s. Alethea, the AI they developed for the one-of-a-kind NFT, was not only visually stunning but had her own personality and was capable of holding conversations with people.
The combination of AIA and NFTs is where art aesthetics, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology meet, and it gives rise to never-seen-before creations that are not only challenging traditional art standards but also generating interesting potentials in the crypto world.
In August 2021 alone, there were two AIA NFT projects that made headlines – Fetch.ai and Art Blocks.
Developed by Colearn Paint, Fetch.ai, a decentralized Machine Learning (ML) company, launched an NFT platform that allows people to generate digital assets through AI and ML. It is one of the first to employ the use of AI technology in NFT creation, using networks and patterns in the artworks of up to 100 different artists to generate new abstract artworks automatically.
AI NFT project Art Blocks, an Ethereum-based NFT project that generates original digital artwork pieces on the blockchain via an algorithm, generated close to $404 million in trading volume, which is 80% more than its total since launching in November 2020.
Their highest selling creation went for $3.3million on the market last month, a record high for the project. The NFT titled ‘The Tulip’ was one of 16 pieces from a collection that sold for at least $1 million each.
What’s on the horizon?
With the rate at which platforms like Art Blocks is growing, and with projects like Fetch.ai and Alethea AI being developed, amongst others, many artists carry the idea that AI may soon be poised to eclipse human ingenuity in art-making. But due to a number of factors, like accessibility and the difficulty of these technologies to be integrated for the masses, it is not something that’s likely on the horizon just yet, though its future possibility is debatable.
The collective value of AIA NFTs and the crypto art boom in 2021 does show that Blockchain and AI aren’t just buzzy topics, but have intersected and grown into a market that can capture real value for creators, collectors, and those in the sphere of tech as well. The development of NFTs is disrupting the art industry, and its evolution has challenged the concept of traditional art and has pushed the boundaries for what creative visual intellectual property means for creators.
What is certain amongst all the hype is that the success and proliferation of NFTs and AIA suggest that the NFT market is indeed growing and is going to continually evolve. With projects in AIA and other potentially unique and diverse NFT art cycles, the tech sphere has seen new advancements made and creativity uncovered in the growing demand from different audiences. Artists who employ GANs to make AIA have found NFT platforms to be uniquely beneficial not only as a way to sell their works, but as a way to critically explore modes of creating that engages with decentralized platforms and other systems on the blockchain.
Explore other interesting AI generative NFTs on mintable.app
