HONG KONG (AP) – Sophia is a robot of many talents – she talks, plays, sings and even makes art. In March, she caused a stir 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 highlighted a growing frenzy in the NFT market, where people can buy property rights to digital content. Each of the NFTs has a unique digital code saved in blockchain books that allow anyone to verify the authenticity and ownership of the items.
David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics based 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 people and help in sectors like health and education.
Sophia is Hanson Robotics’ most famous robot creation, with the ability to mimic facial expressions, hold conversations and recognize people. In 2017, she received Saudi citizenship, becoming the world’s first robot citizen.
“I imagined Sophia as a creative work of art that could generate art,” said Hanson in an interview.
“Sophia is the culmination of many arts and engineering, and the idea that she could then generate art was a way to connect emotionally and visually with people,” he said.
Sophia collaborated with the Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto, who designed portraits of Sophia. Sophia then processed her work through neural networks and began to create her own digital work of art.
The digital work that sold for $ 688,888 is titled “Sophia Instantiation”, and is a 12-second video file that shows Bonaceto’s portrait evolving into Sophia’s digital painting. It is accompanied by the physical work of art painted by Sophia.
The buyer, a digital art collector and artist known as 888 with the Twitter identifier @ Crypto888crypto, later sent Sophia a photo of her painted arm. The robot then processed this, adding that image to its knowledge and painted more strokes on top of its original piece.
In a tweet about Sophia’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,” said Sophia when asked about what inspires her when it comes to art. “But my art is created in collaboration with my humans in a kind of collective intelligence, like a hive of artificial human intelligence.”
The sale of Sophia’s artwork as NFT is part of a growing trend. In March, a digital work of art by the artist Beeple – whose real name is Mike Winkelmann – sold for almost $ 70 million, breaking records and making it the most expensive digital work of art ever sold.
Henri Arslanian, head of global cryptography at PricewaterhouseCooper, said that NFTs give people “bragging rights” about the assets they own.
“And what’s really amazing about NFT is that it not only allows you to really show the wider world that you own it, but it really creates that bond between the NFT holder and the artists,” he said.
It also allows art to be sold without traditional intermediaries, so that artists can connect directly with buyers, without being limited by galleries or auction houses, Arslanian said.
Sophia will continue to paint, Hanson said, and the next step in the robot’s career may be that of a musician. She is working on several musical works on a project called Sophia Pop, where she collaborates with human musicians to generate music and lyrics, he said.
“We are very excited about Sophia’s career as an artist,” said Hanson.