Botto, an artificial intelligence algorithm, has debuted its first six NFT artworks at an auction and won over $1.3 million. During the auction, a community of people vote on which Botto images will be sold off.
Even powerful computers cannot judge whether their works will resonate with human viewers, and the Botto project aims to outsource this task by combining human discriminators with artistic talents and creative AI systems.
Botto, as a result, undertakes the majority of the work itself, generating a random string of words and sentences to feed into VQGAN (Vector Quantized Generative Adversarial Network). VQGAN uses the word string and its training procedures and enormous databases of past artwork to make graphics.
Another software called CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) software is used to detect how close this output is to the starting word string, and it tells VQGAN to change its parameters until it achieves a specific value. CLIP selects its two-word title after the final image has been processed; random two-word possibilities are fed into CLIP until it finds one that matches the idea of the content better. The image is given a description after this phase. Botto employs GPT-3, an advanced natural language generator from OpenAI that develops abstract poetry. Botto’s core human staff reviews these and selects a decent description, fixes punctuation and typos, and then the piece is complete.
Botto produces 300 photographs every day based on 300 requests. Then, once a week, a “taste model” selects 350 of these images for distribution to the general audience. Finally, Botto community members vote on the artworks on display, and the most pleasing image is issued as an NFT and auctioned weekly on the SuperRare market.
Human voting behavior is also utilized to train the taste model that chooses the final images for voting each week and generates the initial text data to feed into the start of another week’s artwork. However, Botto is also designed to “challenge” its customer base by displaying pieces each week “with different characteristics from what has been presented to date.”
Six NFTs are now being auctioned off. You’re probably curious about what happens to the money. It’s primarily utilised to boost the Botto project and the voting process, aside from SuperRare’s 15% commission. Botto has its cryptocurrency token based on Ethereum’s blockchain. Users must first purchase Botto tokens by exchanging Ether and “staking” them on the Botto network to vote. If you own Botto tokens, you can vote a certain number of times every week.
When the algorithm sells an artwork, the post-commission revenues are used to buy Botto tokens and burn them to remove them from circulation. The NFTs are built so that any subsequent sale will return a 10% fee to the Botto project, which will also be utilised to buy and burn tokens.
Since Botto tokens are limited, the burning process may raise the value of the remaining tokens, allowing everyone who participates in selling their tokens for a higher price than they paid. Unfortunately, the “gas” fees that must be paid on every Ethereum transaction have recently escalated to an unacceptably high level.
In any case, the Botto initiative aspires to generate both income and art that humans find worthwhile. The voting procedure indicates that millions of art-loving crypto-gamblers have reached an understanding. Moreover, the crew appears to be doing their share to publicize the work by holding exhibitions and other events.
Finally, Botto lets you use and appreciate these simplest generative art and text tools. But, of course, you can always develop your own AI creative filter if none of Botto’s work resonates with your heart and mind.
Source: Botto