March this year saw Christie’s complete arguably the most controversial sale in its 259-year history. Entirely conducted online, Augmented Intelligence was the first AI- dedicated sale by a major auctioneer and featured 20 works by artists including Refik Anadol and the late AI pioneer Harold Cohen. It caused an outcry not seen since the Zarya case, when a federal court dismissed a lawsuit that questioned the ownership rules around an NFT called ‘Quantum’, which Sotheby’s sold for $1.47 million in 2021.

A letter calling for the Christie’s auction to be scrapped garnered more than 6,500 signatures, with artists claiming that the technology behind the works amounted to “mass theft” because it is trained on human creativity without consent. And yet the sale not only went ahead, it amassed $728,784 across 20 lots (outpacing the house’s projected $600,000) and seduced a new subset of millennial and Gen Z collectors, 37% of whom were first-time Christie’s customers.