Artificial intelligence and art: can machines be creative?

You may think artists would be among the last to be replaced by robots. Well, this week an artwork generated by artificial intelligence will be auctioned for the first time, while a paint ing by a machine has won an international prize. The first, Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (2018), is a print depicting a ghostly image of a man that is valued at US$7,000 to US$10,000 in Christie's' prints and multiples sale on October 25 in New York. It was entirely the creation of an algorithm, the code of which was written by Parisian collective the Obvious artists, who identify themselves as the "publisher" of the painting. The other work is a sitting nude titled The Butcher's Son, a name chosen by Mario Klingemann.