Anita Hill
On February 7, Christie’s announced “Augmented Intelligence,” an auction billed as “the first ever artificial intelligence-dedicated sale at a major auction house.”[1] Bidding will be open from 20 February to 5 March on 34 lots, including 10 non-fungible tokens (NFTs).[2] The works included range from Harold Cohen’s early experiments with AI-generated art in the 1960s to contemporary works by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst.
The auction was quickly met with backlash. On February 8, artist Reid Southen published an open letter calling on Christie’s to cancel the sale, claiming “[m]any of the artworks [Christie’s] plan[s] to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license.”[3] As of writing, over 6,000 people have signed the letter.
Among them are artists Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, two of the plaintiffs in Andersen v. Stability AI, a case currently pending before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.[4] The complaint alleges that Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI’s use of the plaintiffs’ work to train image-generation systems directly infringes plaintiffs’ copyrights.[5] Stability AI and Runway AI did not contest the direct infringement claims, while Midjourney and DeviantArt’s motions to dismiss the direct infringement claims, based in part on fair use, were denied.[6]
Andersen is one of several high-profile class-action lawsuits filed in the past two years contesting the use of artists’ works to train AI models. Plaintiffs include authors, news organizations, music publishers, and even computer programmers.[7] A possible harbinger of the outcome of these cases came from a district court ruling in Thompson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence on February 11.[8] The court resolved factors one and four of the fair use analysis in Thomson Reuters’ favor and thus granted summary judgment for Thomson Reuters on fair use.[9]
However, not all artists are against the use of generative AI, as evidenced in part by the works being sold by Christie’s. A spokesperson for Christie’s pointed out that “[t]he works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work.”[10] Several artists featured in the auction responded to the open letter, some with sympathy for the concerns raised, others calling it “hysteria” and pointing out that “[the] majority of the artists in this [auction are] specifically pushing and using their own datasets + their own models!”[11]
Copyright disputes could complicate an otherwise routine sale for Christie’s. If a work is found to have infringed another artist’s copyright, the remedies available by statute include not only actual damages and additional profits, which would include the proceeds of any sale, but also impoundment and potentially destruction of the infringing work.[12] These remedies would not directly affect Christie’s, but should make both buyers and sellers wary of conducting sales of AI art, impacting Christie’s ability to sell such art. Selling an infringing work could also damage Christie’s reputation and relationships with buyers and sellers. Christie’s does have several lines of defense: the auction house disclaims any warranty of non-infringement as to NFTs, does not guarantee that a buyer will gain any copyright to the work purchased, and retains the right to cancel a sale if it may damage its reputation.[13] Yet it may ultimately be safest to not risk the uncertain legal terrain of AI art.
[1] Jessica Stanley, Augmented Intelligence, Christie’s (Feb. 7, 2025), https://press.christies.com/augmented-intelligence.
[2] Augmented Intelligence, Christie’s, https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/augmented-intelligence/lots/3837 (last visited Feb. 18, 2025).
[3] Reid Southen, Cancel the Christie’s AI Art Auction, Open Letter (Feb. 8, 2025), https://openletter.earth/cancel-the-christies-ai-art-auction-f5135435.
[4] Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal. Jan 13, 2023).
[5] Second Amended Complaint at 1-4, Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal. Oct 31, 2024).
[6] Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motions to Dismiss First Amended Complaint at 4-5, Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 12, 2024); id. at 16; id. at 20-21; id. at 27-30.
[7] See, e.g., Alter v. OpenAI Inc., No. 1:23-cv-10211 (S.D.N.Y. Nov 21. 2023) (author plaintiffs); New York Times Co. v. Microsoft Co., No. 1:23-cv-11195 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 27. 2023) (news organization plaintiffs); Concord Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, No. 5:24-cv-03811 (N.D. Cal. Oct 18, 2023) (music publisher plaintiffs); Doe 1 v. GitHub, Inc., No. 4:22-cv-06823 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 3, 2022) (computer programmer plaintiffs). See also Nina Chandra, Spoiler Alert: Will Pulitzer Prize Winners Triumph in Their Lawsuit Against OpenAI?, Colum. J.L & Arts (Oct. 23, 2024).
[8] Thomson Reuters Enter. Ctr. GMBH v. ROSS Intel. Inc., No. 1:20-CV-613-SB, 2025 WL 458520 (D. Del. Feb. 11, 2025)
[9] Id. at 10.
[10] Carlie Porterfield, Thousands Call on Christie’s to Cancel AI Art Auction in Open Letter, Art Newspaper (Feb. 10, 2025), https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/02/10/christies-artificial-intelligence-auction-open-letter-protest.
[11] George Nelson, Thousands of Artists Demand Christie’s Cancels AI Art Sale: ‘AI Models Exploit Humans’, ARTnews (Feb. 11, 2025) https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/artists-demand-christies-cancels-ai-art-sale-claiming-ai-models-exploit-humans-1234732217/.
[12] 17 U.S.C. §§ 503-504.
[13] Christie’s, Conditions of Sale for Christie’s Inc. 12 (n.d.); id. at 20-21.