Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci ... the art world has never lacked talent. And now, a new painter is ready to join the list, although this one isn’t even human.

莫奈、毕加索、达·芬奇……艺术界从来不缺人才。而如今，一名新画家即将加入这一行列，尽管这位画家甚至并非人类。

Next month, auction¹ house Christie’s Prints and Multiples² will make history by offering the first piece of art created by artificial³ intelligence for sale. The painting is a portrait of a man called Edmond De Belamy, and is expected to be sold for up to $10,000 (69,000 yuan).

佳士得拍卖行的“Prints and Multiples”拍卖活动将于下月创造历史，出售首幅由人工智能（AI）创作的画作。该画作是一位名为爱德蒙·贝拉米的男子的肖像画，估价高达1万美元（约合69000元人民币）。

The work, which features a man with a mysterious look on his face, was created by software developed by the French art group Obvious. Laugero-Lasserre, an art collector from France, called the work “grotesque⁴ and amazing at the same time”. This isn’t the first example of AI-produced artwork, as AI has already been used to write poems and compose songs. However, many people doubt whether it should be called art at all.

画中男子的朦胧神态由法国艺术团体Obvious 所开发的软件创作而成。来自法国的艺术收藏家Laugero-Lasserre 称这幅画作“怪诞却又奇妙”。这并非AI创作的首个艺术作品，先前AI已经被用于作诗作曲。然而，不少人都质疑这些作品是否应该被称为艺术。

According to Russian writer Leo Tolstroy (1828-1910), art is about creating emotion. It’s “a means of … joining people together in the same feelings”, he once said.

俄罗斯作家列夫·托尔斯泰认为，艺术在于创造情感，是“一种将拥有相同感受的人们聚集在一起的方式，”他曾如此说道。

So, if the emotion behind art is what makes it, the ability to create and use tools is what makes human beings different from other species⁵. And as a tool itself, the AI technology used to create the portrait is the result of a lot of effort made by several designers. Together, they “fed” the AI a huge collection of paintings from the 14th to the 18th centuries, until it was able to work out how to make similar paintings of its own.

因此，如果是艺术背后的情感创造了艺术，那么创造并使用工具的才能正是人类有别于其他物种之处。而作为一种工具，用于创造这一肖像画的AI技术是多位设计师花费大量努力制造出的成果。他们共同在AI系统中输入了大量14-18世纪的画作，最终令其能够自主画出类似的画作。

The introduction of AI art could be the beginning of a new artistic⁶ movement. However, not everyone is ready to welcome these high-tech⁷ artists just yet.

AI艺术的引进或许会成为一场全新艺术运动的开端。然而，现在并非所有人都能接受这些高科技艺术家。

“The human mind is what’s behind the AI technology. And the human mind is not a cold, hard fact,” Oscar Schwartz, a professor of AI, said during a TedX Sydney speech. “Rather, it is something that’s created with our opinions and something that changes over time.”

“AI技术的背后是人类的头脑。但人类的头脑并非由冷冰冰的客观事实组成，”AI教授奥斯卡·施瓦辛在一场TedX Sydney的演讲中说道。“而是由我们的观点以及会随着时间流逝而发生变化的事物所组成。”