Artists call on Christie's to pull AI auction that ‘incentivises mass theft of human artists’ work’
Thousands sign letter saying generative AI exploits artists’ works, ‘creating AI products that compete with them’
WHAT’S HAPPENED?
MORE THAN 3,000 artists are calling on auction house Christie’s to cancel a first-of-its-kind sale of artworks entirely produced using AI. Christie’s New York said its Augmented Intelligence sale would feature AI artworks spanning five decades. That puts several lots in the pre-generative AI era but in a web post Christie’s made it clear that several recently produced items were the outputs of image generators DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion — swiftly prompting the ire of creators who penned an open letter addressed to Christie’s digital art director Nicole Sales Giles and her manager Sebastian Sanchez.
“Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a licence,” said the letter. “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.” It went on: “Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivises AI companies’ mass theft of human artists’ work,” before adding: “We ask that, if you have any respect for human artists, you cancel the auction.”
Responding to the letter a Christie’s spokesperson told TechCrunch: “The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work and in most cases, AI is being employed in a controlled manner, with data trained on the artists’ own inputs.”
The letter has been signed by Karla Ortiz, one of the group of artists pursuing a lawsuit for copyright infringement against Stability AI — the developer behind Stable Diffusion — as well as Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway. Ortiz, a fine artist and illustrator who includes Marvel Studios among her clients, took to X to accuse Christie’s of “straight up lying”. “I looked over the publisher artist list and while not all of them use unethical gen AI, a large number of them are!” Ortiz told Christie’s: “Please don’t lie to your customers about the authenticity and safety of the gen AI works you hope to sell. Gen AI exploits the copyrighted works of artists, as our works were used to train some of the models used in the show. This lie worked in 2022 not 2025.”
Also signing the letter is ethical AI campaigner Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of Fairly Trained. Posting on X he said it was “totally extraordinary” that Christie’s would elevate DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion “all of which were trained on mountains of artists' work without permission, without once mentioning the huge issues with this, or the sustained, loud protests from artists”. Newton-Rex said Christie’s response to the letter had been “hugely misleading”. “Christie’s know that they are selling works made using models trained on other people’s art without permission or payment,” he said, calling on Christie’s to at least remove works “trained on other people’s art from the auction.”
Twenty lots are due to go under the hammer when bidding opens on February 20. Total sales are estimated to be at least $600,000.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
✨ On LinkedIn Johan Cedmar-Brandstedt, the ethical AI town crier, said Augmented Intelligence “could have been a celebratory range of creative and innovative uses of the technology” but for some reason Christie’s had also “wedged in piracy-powered gen AI slop and pretentious handwaving to muddy the waters, antagonising the rights-aware artist crowd”. He’s right. There are some genuinely fascinating works pre-dating the emergence of generative AI, but their inclusion in an auction that naively gushes about gen AI’s ability to “create art that’s as intriguing as it is disruptive” taints and diminishes them. Christie’s should know better.
Further reaction to the Christie’s auction and other developments that threaten to reshape the global human-made media landscape in this Friday’s Weekly Newsletter
Unfortunately you can’t shame an auction house. If they won’t apologize for selling artifacts looted from war zones, they won’t apologize for stolen digital IP