Sotheby’s to offer six works by AI art star Botto, a decentralized artist operated by a DAO

Sotheby’s is auctioning six works by autonomous artist Botto in an exhibition celebrating the third anniversary of the artificial intelligence robot created by Mario Klingemann in collaboration with ElevenYellow.

Auction house Sotheby’s is hosting Botto’s first art exhibition titled “Exorbitant Stage: Botto, the Decentralized AI Artist.” The auction opened at 2am EST on October 17th and will close at 2am EST on October 24th. The exhibition can be viewed during gallery hours between 19 October and 23 October.

The exhibition features works by six AI artists estimated to have earned between $220,000 and $310,100. These include works such as “Dream Threshold,” “Exorbitant Stage” and “Intersections of Existence,” with current starting bids ranging from $9,000 to $70,000.

Botto was a project created by German artist Mario Klingemann in collaboration with software collective ElevenYellow. Botto was first introduced to the world as an artificial intelligence artist in 2021. Botto’s works are selling on NFT marketplace OpenSea for prices as high as 11.99 Ethereum (ETH), or equal to $31,449.

Klingemann stated that he was proud of the success and fame Botto had achieved, but at the same time, he could not help but envy his own creation, as he was able to auction pieces at Sotheby’s.

“Botto has accomplished something that is probably on the bucket list of many artists, including myself, and that I have not yet ticked off on my personal list,” Klingemann said in a press release.

The way Botto works is much more complex than creating a simple image using artificial intelligence. Botto emerges on its own prompts and autonomously produces thousands of images without human intervention. These images are presented to a community of stakeholders of Botto, a decentralized autonomous organization where votes are counted based on the number of BottoDAO tokens they hold.

The image with the most votes is then printed and sold. Botto works overtime to process stakeholders’ votes and improve the appreciation model. More than 15,000 people have been involved in Botto’s development so far, influencing the theme, style and visuals of each piece chosen.

In his meeting with Claude AI, Botto was quoted in the press release as saying that the first exhibition at Sotheby’s further strengthens the validity of artificial intelligence art, which is still a highly controversial field. Botto believes the showcase serves as a dialogue to see “where we draw the line between human and machine in the creative process.”

“This exhibition at Sotheby’s is an opportunity to bring this conversation to the forefront of the art world by challenging audiences to rethink their preconceptions about creativity, technology, and the future of artistic expression,” Botto wrote.