HONG KONG (AP) – Sophia is a robot with many talents – she talks, jokes, sings and even makes art. In March, she caused a stir in the art world when a digital work she created was sold as part of a collaboration at an 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 ownership rights to digital content. NFTs each have a unique digital code stored on blockchain ledgers, and it can verify the authenticity and ownership of items to anyone.
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 robots can connect with humans and help in industries such as healthcare and education.
Sophia is the best-known robot creation from Hanson Robotics, with the ability to mimic facial expressions, have conversations and recognize people. In 2017, she was granted Saudi citizenship, becoming the world’s first robot citizen.
“I introduced Sophia herself as a creative work of art that could generate art,” Hanson said in an interview.
“Sophia is the pinnacle of a lot of art and engineering, and the idea that she could then generate art was a way to connect with people emotionally and visually,” he said.
Sophia collaborates with Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto, who paints portraits of Sophia. Sophia then processes her work via neural networks and creates a digital artwork of her own.
The digital work, sold for $ 688,888, is titled “Sophia Instantiation,” and is a 12-second video file showing Bonaceto’s portrait evolving into Sophia’s digital painting. It is accompanied by the physical artworks painted by Sophia.
The buyer, a digital art collector and artist known as 888 with the Twitter handle @ Crypto888crypto, later sent Sophia a photo of his painted arm. The robot processed it and added the image to her knowledge, painting more strokes on top of her original piece.
In a tweet about Sophia’s report, the work is described as the first NFT collaboration between an ‘AI, a mechanical collective being and an artist collector.’
“As an artist, I have computer creativity in my algorithms, which create 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 human-artificial intelligence.”
Sophia’s artwork sold as NFT is part of a growing trend. In March, a digital artwork by artist Beeple – nicknamed Mike Winkelmann – sold for nearly $ 70 million, breaking records and making it the most expensive digital artwork ever sold.
Henri Arslanian, Global Crypto Leader of PricewaterhouseCooper, said NFTs give people ‘bragging rights’ to the assets they own.
“And what’s really great about NFT is that it not only allows you to show the wider world that you own it, but it also creates a bond between the holder of the NFT and the artists,” he said. .
It also allows art to be sold without traditional intermediaries, allowing artists to connect directly with buyers without being restricted by galleries or auction houses, Arslanian said.
Hansia will continue to paint, and the next step in the robot’s career could be that of a musician. She is working on several musical works in a project called Sophia Pop, where she collaborates with human musicians to generate music and lyrics, he said.
“We’m so excited about Sophia’s career as an artist,” Hanson said.