How a Teenager's Code Spawned a $432,500 Piece of Art

One Thursday last month, 19-year-old Robbie Barrat woke to a fusillade of messages on his phone. "I was half asleep but saw they all contained the same number," he says. "Then I fell back asleep for a few hours. I didn't really want to believe." The number in those messages was $432,500--the winning bid at Christie's New York on a ghostly portrait created using artificial intelligence, following a recipe Barrat posted online not long after graduating high school.