The battle rages on between human artists and AI-enabled art. Later this month (February 20 to March 5) a selection of works “highlighting the breadth and quality of AI art” is set to go on sale at Christie’s auction house. In protest, however, more than 3,000 artists have signed an open letter for the auction’s immediate cancellation.

As detailed on the Christie’s website, the auction explores the evolution of art and technology over several decades, tracing how art reflects on the question of human agency in the age of AI. Works by AI art pioneers of the 1960s, like Harold Cohen, are on offer alongside pieces from some of the biggest contemporary artists experimenting with the tech, including Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Refik Anadol, Pindar Van Arman, and Sasha Stiles.

Spanning a variety of mediums – including painting, sculpture, prints, and digital art – the works feature the use of (or collaboration with) AI tools including GANs, robotics, and “interactive experiences”.

The critical open letter is addressed to Nicole Sales Giles and Sebastian Sanchez, digital art specialists at Christie’s. “We are writing to express serious concern over your upcoming auction of AI art at Christie’s,” it reads. “Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license.”

“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 authors continue. “Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies’ mass theft of human artists’ work. We ask that, if you have any respect for human artists, you cancel the auction.”

Signatories of the letter include the artists Karla Ortiz and Kelly McKernan, who have led a lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt for the alleged violation of copyright laws to train their AI image-generating models.

In response to the letter, a spokesperson for Christie’s argues (via The Art Newspaper) in favour of the artist’s use of AI. “The artists represented in this sale all have strong, existing multidisciplinary art practices, some recognised in leading museum collections,” they say. “The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work.”

Anadol has also commented on the open letter via X. “This is so funny :) majority of the artists in the project specifically pushing and using their own datasets + their own models!” he writes. (See: the actual subject matter of Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s recent Serpentine exhibition.) “This is the basic problem of entire art ecosystem, results of lazy critic practices and doomsday hysteria driven dark minds. BUT – future is bright ;)”