Botto, the Millionaire AI Artist, Is Getting a Personality

It’s an interesting idea, and it is fun to see the idea of an AI agent explored within the relatively benign realm of artistic expression.

That said, Botto still poses some ethical conundrums. Many working artists rightly worry about the impact AI is having on their profession, as models trained on millions of copyrighted works are used to generate infinite knock-offs on demand.

Perhaps Botto is something altogether different. Klingemann is an early adopter of AI in art, using neural networks as part of the artistic process, and as a kind of performance schtick. His previous creations include a video installation featuring ever-changing AI-generated portraits and a robot dog that poops critiques of visual artworks.

And while Botto generates high-priced images using a model trained on public work, Klingermann does not see this as outright plagiarism. “Image models and LLMs are the new search engines,” he says. “For me, creativity is kind of finding something that already exists in possibility-space, and deciding this is interesting, while making sure it looks [like it] doesn’t belong to anybody already.”

The images made by Botto seem aesthetically pleasing but also feel—to my untrained eye, at least—like fairly generic AI image generator offerings.

While the Botto project poses some interesting questions about what constitutes artistic agency, for now I think it only emphasizes the importance of human intelligence and inventiveness. The spark of creativity belongs not to the machine that churns out a never-ending variety of images with feedback from the crowd, but to the artists who came up with the idea in the first place.

What do you think of Botto and its artwork? Is it a worthwhile artistic idea or just another way to make money from generative AI and meme coins? Send a message to hello@wired.com or leave a comment below to let me know.