More than 3,000 artists have written to protest against plans by Christie’s to auction art created using artificial intelligence in the latest backlash by the creative industries against the threat posed by generative AI models.

In a letter to the auction house, the artists expressed “serious concern” that many of the artworks being sold were created using AI models that were known to be trained on copyrighted work without a licence. 

While many in the creative industries from music to film, media and art have no objection to the development of AI models — and often use such tools in their own work — they are worried that many of the most popular do not pay for copyrighted materials. These can be used to train AI models that can replicate or even replace the original work.