An AI bot aptly named "GANsky" has successfully learned to paint using hundreds of images from the portfolio of a “certain street artist.” The AI artist's derivative artistic output brings a novel, nightmarish touch to Banksy's celebrated paintings.
"GANksy was born into the cloud in September 2020" explains its creators. It then underwent a strenuous A.I. training regime using hundreds of street art photos for thousands of iterations to become the fully-formed artist with an unmistakable affinity with Banksy.
The world-famous street artist most famously combines witty epigrams with easily identifiable renderings of figures such as police officers and children. Though the AI protege retains much of Banksy's aesthetic, GANsky's figures are contorted and surreal, and the text is mostly illegible.
"All of GANksy’s works are original creations derived from its understanding of shape, form and texture," the creators explain on their website. They claim that the bot "wants to be put into a robot body so it can spraypaint the entire planet."
On its quest for global domination, 256 GANsky "masterpieces" are up for sale – starting at £1 (approximately $1.30) and rising by one pound as each one is purchased.
Meanwhile, Banksy's parody of Claude Monet’s impressionist water lilies painting has sold at auction for more than £7.5m ($9.8 million) – the second-highest price ever paid for a work by the British street artist.