Technology AI Robot dog with Elon Musk's head poops out AI generated art The dystopian art installation features billionaires and Silicon Valley's elite. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Robot dogs are already a bit creepy. But slap on a hyper-realistic image of a tech billionaire's face and have them literally crap out a piece of AI-generated art and you're left with something that would make producers shudder. In, the event space is crowded with six flesh-toned robotic dogs, each bearing a detached, photorealistic head of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, or the installation's creator, digital artist Beeple .

For fans of digital art in a more traditional sense – art produced by a human who is making conscious decisions about their use of digital technologies – new trends dominating the genre have been met with some skepticism. Whereas the general public seems to have gotten on board with these shifts with little hesitation, the complexities of this new wave are not lost on those with familiarity to art, technology, or its intersection. While the emergence of these art forms dates back to the 20th century, the tail-end of the last decade has seen significant advancements in machine learning and increased visibility with easy promotion via social media. This past year, non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, caused frenzied bidding wars among its fans, and harsh criticisms from its skeptics, in part due to the environmental impact of the medium – on average, the creation of one Ethereum-based NFT, not including the computational power required in the sale process, amounts to 120.7 pounds of CO2, which is equivalent to driving a car 200 miles or 322 kilometers. However, regardless of reason, backlash from artists was minimal, with many looking to capitalize on the massive potential gains – with the exception of David Hockney, a digital artist himself and one of only two people on Earth whose work has sold for more than Beeple's $69.3 million-dollar NFT, The First 5000 Days. Hockney is responsible for the scalding take that NFTs are "silly little things" and that a better acronym would be "I.C.S. […] international crooks and swindlers."

Web3 and emerging technologies have been pushing the boundaries of art distribution, ownership and engagement with fans. However, not all of the recent developments are welcomed by the art community, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). Recently, AI-generated art has sparked a major debate around ownership after a smartphone app went viral which created AI-generated portraits. The debate around ownership of intellectual property (IP) rights is similar to those seen in the film and music industries. However, developers in the emerging tech space say blockchain technology can provide a middle for artists and AI-generated content.

On March 11, 2021, the auction house Christie's sold a work by an American graphic designer, Michael Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple, for a colossal $69 million, making it the third most expensive work ever sold by a living artist. The work, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, is a nonfungible token, or NFT. It's a computer file that cannot be exchanged, copied, or destroyed, which gives the purchaser proof of authenticity. It lives online in a virtual space--an immaterial space--in a blockchain, a secure digital public ledger.