Pictured: Art by "Alejandro" on Open Sea
Update, 9/2: Clarification via August Rosedale: The $250K worth in sales mentioned in this post were not directly, as originally reported, from art by AIs Alejandro/Taylor -- they were "created" by Rosedale's new AI artist crypo-native, "a truly digital artist creating dynamically evolving art pieces in numerous styles." However, he adds, "Alejandro and Taylor did entirely sell out a couple days before the crypto-native release I think due to excitement for the crypto-native project."
So I told you about "Alejandro", an AI personality who is "creating" works of art which entrepreneur August Rosedale is then selling as NFTs, but here's the wilder thing:
When August put art by Alejandro and his AI artist colleague "Taylor" up for sale this Monday, via his Mirage Gallery, nearly 1000 copies were sold near instantaneously. [Note: See clarification above - WJA]
"The full 920 piece sold in 5 minutes, which was absolutely insane," August reports to me now.
At their current value in Ethereum, that translates into $85,000 USD -- but that's only the start, because many of those works are then being resold: "Meaning someone buys one (or got one of the 920 from me) and then has sold it. Combined secondary sales have almost reached 40 eth ($148k) which I get a 10% cut of."
So within a week, total sales for art created by AI are now nearly $250,000.
Even August is stunned:
"[I]t's been a completely life-changing past few days," as he puts it to me. "Still in shock that it even happened."
He's not quite sure why there was such a run on AI art, except perhaps that this is a new twist on the over-heated NFT art space:
"People seemed to support the project because of the AI evolving aspect which hasn't been done before as far as I have seen in the art space. Such a rewarding experience."
Personally I think my pretentious asshole interview with Alejandro may have been the trick, but then again maybe not.
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