After posting the following AI-generated images, I got private replies asking the same question: "Can you tell me how you made these?" So, here I will provide the background and "how to" of creating such AI portraits, but also describe the ethical considerations and the dangers we should address right now. Generative AI – as opposed to analytical artificial intelligence – can create novel content. It not only analyzes existing datasets but it generates whole new images, text, audio, videos, and code. As the ability to generate original images based on written text emerged, it became the hottest hype in tech. It all began with the release of DALL-E 2, an improved AI art program from OpenAI.

Ali Hirsa, a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia Engineering, has always been interested in the possibility of merging art and technology. This curiosity led him to collaborate with New York-based artist Marco Gallotta on projects in which they could apply AI algorithms to works of art created by Gallotta. Hirsa recently discussed this partnership with Columbia News, along with his career path from Wall Street to university professor, and advice for those contemplating a similar journey. I have known Marco for eight years. I became familiar with his art during an auction at the primary school that our kids were attending.

With the internet buzzing about the viral FaceApp, which uses AI to predict how anyone will look in 30 years, there's another service that will transform you into a work of art. If you've ever dreamed of how your portrait would look if it were painted by one of the great masters, this app is for you. AI Portraits uses information from over 45,000 15th-century masterpieces to help "paint" the portrait of any photo that's uploaded. While there are plenty of apps and filters that promise to make your photo into a work of art, AI Portraits distinguishes itself with its GAN models. Many services use style transfers that alter colors, but leave the facial lines untouched.

Google's Pixel 3 takes portrait photos that are more accurate than its predecessor could take when new, which is no mean feat when you realize that the upgrade comes solely through software. But just what is Google doing, exactly? The company is happy to explain. It just posted a look into the Pixel 3's (or really, the Google Camera app's) Portrait Mode that illustrates how its AI changes produce portraits with fewer visual glitches. When the Pixel 2 launched, Google used a neural network and the camera's phase-detect autofocus (namely, the parallax effect it offers) to determine what's in the foreground.

In 1913, the largest and most influential art show in history took place; The 1913 Armory Show. Packed into New York's 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenues between 25th and 26th streets were over 1200 works of art that ranged from sculptures, paintings and decorative works by over 300 artists from America and Europe. The show introduced Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp and modernism to American audiences. The event was so radical at the time, critics, who were used to realism in their art, questioned the sanity of the artists whose works were represented in the show. But the experimental art was eventually embraced by America and made way for great American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol.

Yesterday we reported on AI Portraits, a new website that uses a neural network to analyze your photos and generate a brand-new portrait in your likeness. As such, we've decided to keep testing out the algorithm on some more well-known faces. Some of our test subjects actually looked pretty accurate -- AI Portraits' algorithm was trained on celebrities' faces, so it's even possible that the AI system has seen some of these people before -- and others looked like they were nightmares conjured by Google's DeepDream. Elon Musk's AI-generated portrait doesn't seem too far off -- even his semi-mustache made it though. The algorithm is trained to tune into facial features absent anything else.

On Thursday, October 25th, Christie's will conduct a very unusual sale. As part of a three-day Prints & Multiples event, it's auctioning off the Portrait of Edmond Belamy, a canvas in a gold frame that shows the smudged figure of what looks like an 18th century gentleman. It's expected to fetch a modest price, somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000, but the artwork's distinguishing feature is that it was "created by an artificial intelligence," says Christie's. "And when it goes under the hammer, [it] will signal the arrival of AI art on the world auction stage." But for members of the burgeoning AI art community, there's another attribute that sets the Portrait of Edmond Belamy apart: it's a knock-off. The print was created by Obvious, a trio of 25-year-old French students whose goal is to "explain and democratize" AI through art.

Robbie Barrat was 17 and bored in West Virginia when he started experimenting with artificial intelligence and art.

Christie's has sold its first piece of AI art, a canvas named the Portrait of Edmond Belamy, for $432,500. The sale is unusual not only as a first for the 252-year-old auction house, but because the expected price for the print was between $7,000 and $10,000. The artwork was created by a collective named Obvious. The three members of Obvious, a trio of 25-year-old French students, used a type of machine learning algorithm known as a GAN (generative adversarial network) to create the picture. The network was trained on a dataset of historical portraits, and then it tried to create one of its own.

On Friday, October 25th, Christie's will conduct a very unusual sale. As part of a three-day Prints & Multiples event, it's auctioning off the Portrait of Edmond Belamy, a canvas in a gold frame that shows the smudged figure of what looks like an 18th century gentleman. It's expected to fetch a modest price, somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000, but the artwork's distinguishing feature is that it was "created by an artificial intelligence," says Christie's. "And when it goes under the hammer, [it] will signal the arrival of AI art on the world auction stage." But for members of the burgeoning AI art community, there's another attribute that sets the Portrait of Edmond Belamy apart: it's a knock-off. The print was created by Obvious, a trio of 25-year-old French students whose goal is to "explain and democratize" AI through art.