Edmond de Belamy

Edmond de Belamy is a portrait generated by an artificial neural network trained on a dataset of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th and 19th centuries. The artwork was created by the Paris-based art collective Obvious using a generative adversarial network (GAN) algorithm. The image depicts a fictional 18th-century nobleman rendered in a style that blends historical portraiture with algorithmic abstraction.

The work gained international prominence when it was auctioned at Christie's in New York on October 25, 2018, selling for $432,500—far exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $7,000–$10,000. This sale marked a watershed moment in art history, raising questions about authorship, creativity, and the role of artificial intelligence in artistic production. The high price and media attention sparked debate about whether AI-generated images constitute genuine art and whether algorithms can be considered creative agents.