“Seeing this work pass from its 4th collector to a venture capital firm earlier this year was really depressing.” -Robbie Barrat https://twitter.com/videodrome/status/1379198920207785988

Robbie Barrat minted AI Generated Nude Portrait #1, the product of GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) on Super Rare in April 2018. Barrat trained his GAN on collections of nineteenth-century portraits. The swag bags at Christie’s 2018 Art + Tech Summit included 300 mints from his animation, AI Generated Nude Portrait #7. Hardly anyone was interested in NFTs back then, and most of the summit’s attendees threw away their Robbies. Only 14 were claimed at the time, and some others were claimed later. These are on Barrat’s Super Rare profile with a total of 20 having owners. The rest are known as “Lost Robbies.” 

3 months after the event, 18 year-old Robbie made worldwide art news when the code he invented was used by French artist trio Obvious to create Portrait of Edmond Belamy, which then sold for $432,500 as the first ever AI generated artwork sold at a Christie’s auction with no credit to Robbie at the time.

Disillusioned with the meteoric rise of the overtly greedy NFT ecosystem, Barrat has since left the NFT space. Here’s his tweet: “I'm glad that this old story is getting attention; since it's funny but I don't want people to think that I still am actively involved with NFTs. I don't plan on making any more until the environmental / speculative aspects of the space change (if ever).” https://twitter.com/videodrome/status/1379198909373894656.

-Story attribution: Zack Yanger, full article: https://editorial.superrare.com/2020/09/05/the-lost-robbies/

This art is backed up on Arweave, the permanent web.

ARWEAVE download: https://app.ardrive.io/#/file/7fecb60e-6e3c-4ff9-b890-4e3094ab1377/view

ARWEAVE VIEW: https://mdnvaqi2zpi3itil6chkb7eje6ibyd2xq6hny4sh4zg3m5yraeqa.arweave.net/YNtQQRrL0bRNC_COoPyJJ5AcD1eHjtxyR-ZNtncRASA

ARWEAVE HASH: YNtQQRrL0bRNC_COoPyJJ5AcD1eHjtxyR-ZNtncRASA