這幅畫賣出300萬天價 但它的創作者卻“不是人”

An unsettling portrait created by artificial intelligence (AI) made a historic appearance on the auction block at Christie's in New York City this week. It is the first artwork created by an algorithm to be offered for auction in the world of fine art.

本週，一幅具有顛覆意義的肖像畫出現在紐約佳士得拍賣行的拍賣臺上，此舉頗有歷史意義。這幅畫作由人工智能創作，是藝術界首次拍賣由算法創作的藝術品。

The creepy-looking painting of a fictitious man in a dark frockcoat left the auction block at Christie's for a whopping $432,500 on Oct. 25 in New York City.

這幅畫畫的是一位身穿黑色雙排扣長禮服的虛構人物，看上去有點詭異。10月25日，在紐約佳士得拍賣行拍出了43.25萬美元（約合300萬元人民幣）的價格。

The portrait — designed in the "Old Master" style reminiscent of European fine artists from centuries ago — only partially fills the canvas, leaving empty space around the central figure. It appears to represent a man with a blurred face, dressed in clothing similar to that worn by subjects painted by the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn in the 17th century.

這幅畫的顏料僅僅覆蓋了部分畫布，主體人像周圍留出了大片空白。畫作遵循數百年前的歐洲古典美術風格，似乎描繪了一名五官模糊的男子，其穿着的外衣類似於17世紀荷蘭畫家倫勃朗·梵·萊茵筆下人物的穿着。

Of course, a computer didn't spontaneously pick up a brush and become an artist. The AI that generated the image had human programmers — a Parisian art collective called Obvious, Christie's reported. Their collaboration, titled "Portrait of Edmond De Belamy," is part of a series of paintings of the fictional Belamy family and was expected to fetch $7,000 to $10,000, according to Christie's.

當然，計算機本身並不會自發地拿起畫筆，變身藝術家。據佳士得介紹，創作這幅肖像畫的人工智能依靠了人類程序員——一個名爲“顯而易見”的巴黎藝術團體。按照佳士得的說法，這幅畫題爲《埃德蒙·德-貝拉米像》，是虛構的貝拉米家族系列畫作中的一件，原本估價7000至10000美元。

To generate the portrait, the Obvious team first fed the neural network a diet of 15,000 images painted between the 14th and 20th centuries, to train it to recognize visual elements in fine art, Obvious artist Hugo Caselles-Dupré told Christie's. The algorithm that eventually created an original image had two parts that worked against each other, called the Generator and the Discriminator; they dubbed this combative AI "generative adversarial network" (GAN), Caselles-Dupré explained.

“顯而易見”團隊的藝術家雨果·卡塞列斯-迪普雷告訴佳士得拍賣行，爲生成這幅肖像畫，他們首先將15000幅14至20世紀作品的圖像輸入一個神經網絡，訓練它辨認藝術品中的視覺元素。據介紹，最終生成原創畫作的算法由兩個相互矛盾的部分組成，分別被稱作“‘生成者與“辨別者”。“顯而易見”團隊把這種鬥爭性人工智能稱爲“生成式對抗網絡”。

"The Generator makes a new image based on the set, then the Discriminator tries to spot the difference between a human-made image and one created by the Generator. The aim is to fool the Discriminator into thinking that the new images are real-life portraits. Then, we have a result," he told Christie's.

卡塞列斯-迪普雷說：“‘生成者’依據作品庫生成新圖像，然後‘辨別者’會努力分辨人類畫作與‘生成者’畫作的區別。我們的目的是把‘辨別者’搞糊塗，讓它以爲新圖像就是真人創作的肖像畫。這時，我們的成果就產生了。”

GAN's final image was then inkjet-printed on canvas and framed, according to Obvious. At the bottom of the portrait is a mathematical formula representing the algorithm that created it, a nod to the relationship between the Generator and the Discriminator, Obvious artists wrote on the collective's website.

然後，“生成式對抗網絡”創作出的成品會被噴墨打印機繪製在畫布上，並裝框成畫。“顯而易見”團隊在其官方網站上介紹說，《埃德蒙·德-貝拉米像》的畫面底端有一行數學公式，代表了生成這幅畫的算法，肯定了“生成者”與“辨別者”之間的關係。

The goal of the painting and of Obvious, also co-founded by Hugo Caselles-Dupré and Gauthier Vernier, was to prove "artificial intelligence can do more than operate driverless cars or transform manufacturing — it can be creative," CNBC reported.

據美國全國廣播公司財經頻道報道，“顯而易見”團體創作這幅畫是爲了證明“人工智能不僅能駕駛無人汽車，或者改變製造業，它還很有創造性。”這一團體由雨果·卡塞列斯-迪普雷和戈捷·維爾涅共同創立。

Portraiture is a tough genre for AI to take on, according to Christie's, "since humans are highly attuned to the curves and complexities of a face in a way that a machine cannot be."

佳士得拍賣行表示，對於人工智能來說，肖像畫是非常難呈現的一個繪畫體裁，“因爲人們很擅長畫臉部的曲線和複雜部位，而人工智能往往做不到。”

This difficulty was part of Obvious' thinking when they created the portrait.

“顯而易見”團體創作這幅畫時也考慮到了這個難點。

"We did some work with nudes and landscapes, and we also tried feeding the algorithm sets of works by famous painters. But we found that portraits provided the best way to illustrate our point, which is that algorithms are able to emulate creativity," Caselles-Dupré said.

卡塞列斯-迪普雷說：“我們還用人工智能創作了一些裸體畫和風景畫，還曾嘗試把名畫家的畫作輸入進去。但我們發現肖像畫能最好地闡明人工智能畫作的特點，也就是算法也可以模擬出人類的創造性。”

"Edmond de Belamy" is one of 11 AI paintings made by Obvious.

“顯而易見”團體共創作了11幅人工智能畫作，這是其中一幅。