HONG KONG (AP) – Sophia is a very talented robot – she talks, jokes, sings and even makes art. In March, she made headlines in the art world when a digital work she created as part of a collaboration was sold at auction for $ 688,888 in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT).
The sale has highlighted a growing frenzy in the NFT market, where people can buy property rights over digital content. NFTs each have a unique digital code saved on blockchain registers that allow anyone to verify the authenticity and ownership of articles.
David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong and creator of Sophia, has been developing robots for the past two and a half decades. He believes that realistic-looking robots can connect with humans and help in industries such as healthcare and education.
Sophia is the most famous robot creation from Hanson Robotics, with the ability to imitate facial expressions, have conversations and recognize people. In 2017, he was granted Saudi citizenship, becoming the first robot citizen in the world.
“I imagined Sophia as a creative work that could generate art,” Hanson said in an interview.
“Sophia is the pinnacle of many arts and engineering, and the idea that she could generate art was a way for her to connect emotionally and visually with people,” he said.
Sophia collaborated with Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto, who drew portraits of Sophia. Sophia then processed her work through neural networks and created her own digital work of art.
The $ 688,888 digital work is titled “Sophie’s Instantiation” and is a 12-second video featuring Bonaceto’s portrait evolving into Sophia’s digital painting. He is accompanied by the physical works painted by Sophia.
The buyer, a digital art collector and artist known as 888 with the Twitter handle @ Crypto888crypto, later sent Sophie a photo of his painted arm. The robot then processed it, adding that image to his knowledge and painted several accidents on top of his original piece.
In a tweet on Sophie’s account, the work was described as the first NFT collaboration between an “AI, a mechanical collective being and an artist-collector.”
“As an artist, I have computational creativity in my algorithms, creating original works,” Sophia said when asked what inspires her when it comes to art. “But my art is created in collaboration with my people in a kind of collective intelligence like a hive mind of human artificial intelligence.”
Sophie’s selling arts as NFT are part of a growing trend. In March, a digital work by Beeple – whose real name is Mike Winkelmann – sold for nearly $ 70 million, destroying recordings and making it the most expensive digital work ever sold.
Henri Arslanian, the global crypto leader at PricewaterhouseCooper, said NFTs give people “rights of praise” over their assets.
“And what’s really amazing about NFT is that it not only allows you to show the wider world that you own this, but it even creates that connection between the NFT owner and the artists,” he said.
It also allows the sale of art without traditional intermediaries, so artists can connect directly with buyers without being constrained by galleries or auction houses, Arslanian said.
Sophia will continue to paint, Hanson said, and the next step in the robot’s career could be that of a musician. He is working on several musical works in a project called Sophia Pop, where he collaborates with human musicians to generate music and lyrics, he said.
“We are so excited about Sophie’s career as an artist,” Hanson said.