Press
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OpenAI's first artist in residence launches Phyzify
Reben, OpenAI's first artist in residence, launches Phyzify, a lab that uses AI to turn text prompts and ideas into physically prototyped objects, automating stages from design through patent filing.
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Christie's AI art auction draws big-money bids — and thousands of protest signatures
Reben's work features in Christie's Augmented Intelligence, the first AI-dedicated auction at a major house, where a robot adds oil paint to his canvas with each bid as thousands of artists sign a protest letter.
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Christie's Contested AI Sale Reels in a Younger Crowd
Christie's Augmented Intelligence sale drew a notably younger audience; Reben's live painting robot, adding strokes in response to each bid, attracted the most bidders, and his Untitled Robot Painting sold for $8,190.
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Christie's AI art auction inspires protests — and more art
Amid protests over Christie's first AI art auction, Reben installs a painting robot at Christie's New York that puts brush to canvas with each bid, arguing that an artist's intention matters most.
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Visions of A.I. Art From OpenAI's First Artist in Residence
As OpenAI's first artist in residence, Reben gained early access to the Sora text-to-video tool, converting its AI imagery into 3-D models that a robotic cutter carved into white Italian marble.
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A conversation with OpenAI's first artist in residence
Speaking as OpenAI's first artist in residence, Reben rejects the "AI artist" label and describes chaining AI tools into marble sculptures and installations that use humor to explore our relationship with technology.
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An Artist in Residence on A.I.'s Territory
Reben is named OpenAI's first artist in residence — a three-month program beginning January 2024 — where he pairs custom code with GPT-4 to make AI-driven, often humorous physical artworks.
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The First Museum Retrospective on A.I. Artist Alexander Reben Explores His Playfully Conceptual Creations
Reben's first museum retrospective, AI Am I? ARTificial Intelligence as Generated by Alexander Reben, opens at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum, surveying his playfully conceptual AI works, including the interactive Speak Art Into Life.
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How AI can shape the future of art and why one artist hopes it will spark imagination
In a CNN segment, Reben describes himself as cautiously optimistic about AI in art, envisioning a human-machine symbiosis that sparks new forms of creativity and imagination.
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In This Exhibition, An AI Dreams Up Imaginary Artworks That Artist Alexander Reben Then Creates IRL
For AI Am I? (The New Aesthetic), Reben had GPT-3 invent imaginary artworks — titles, descriptions, and all — which he then fabricated physically, including a sculpture of assorted plungers.
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This artist is using AI to paint with his mind
The MIT-trained roboticist generates paintings by having AI combine and evolve images while software reads his brainwaves and body signals to pick which he prefers — making art without lifting a brush.
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The bizarre thing that happens when artificial intelligence tells people their fortunes
Reben trained an AI on scraped inspirational sayings to write fortune-cookie messages, but roughly 75 percent turned dark and ominous; he prints favorites and sells them through LA's Charlie James Gallery.
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Sometimes We Feel More Comfortable Talking To A Robot
Reben's cardboard robot BlabDroid — an outgrowth of his MIT robot Boxie, made with filmmaker Brent Hoff — coaxes people into sharing secrets and emotions, probing whether machines can meet our need for companionship.
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Critics' Pick: The Basilisk at Nicodim Gallery
In the group show The Basilisk at Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, Reben shows the five-minute video Deeply Artificial Trees (2017), which uses AI to warp Bob Ross into rapidly morphing, unsettling imagery.
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Artificial Intelligence Turned Bob Ross into a Terrifying Psychedelic Nightmare
Reben's video Deeply Artificial Trees runs Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting through neural networks — Deep Dream visuals paired with a WaveNet version of Ross's voice — turning the gentle show into a psychedelic nightmare.
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This is what AI sees and hears when it watches 'The Joy of Painting'
Reben's Deeply Artificial Trees applies machine learning to Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting, using WaveNet-generated audio and Deep Dream visuals to evoke what an AI might perceive watching the show.
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From cute droids to robots that stab you, it's time to get personal with machines
A profile of Reben, an MIT-trained artist-engineer and WIRED Innovation Fellow, whose work spans cardboard droids that elicit confessions and The First Law, a robot that can prick a person's finger — spurring debate about coexisting with machines.
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A Robot That Harms: When Machines Make Life Or Death Decisions
Reben's robot The First Law pricks fingers using an algorithm even he can't predict, deliberately defying Asimov's first law to provoke discussion of a future where machines make life-or-death decisions.
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This robot chose to injure the man who built it. Here's why its inventor is pleased.
Reben built a robot that autonomously and intentionally decides whether to prick a person's finger, breaking Asimov's first law; he is pleased because the piece provokes urgent debate about machines empowered to harm.
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'Harmful' robot aims to spark AI debate
Reben's robot The First Law, named for Asimov's rule that machines must not harm humans, autonomously decides whether to prick an unsuspecting person's finger — a philosophical experiment meant to spark debate about AI.
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This Robot Intentionally Hurts People — And Makes Them Bleed
The Berkeley artist-roboticist built a tabletop robot that uses an algorithm, unpredictable even to him, to decide whether to jab a person's fingertip with a needle — provoking debate about machines that choose to harm.
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Activist trolls patent trolls, builds algorithm that publishes ideas for all possible inventions
Reben's All Prior Art runs an algorithm that recombines existing US patents into new invention descriptions and publishes them as public-domain prior art, aiming to preempt patent trolls by rendering ideas unpatentable.
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Can Silly Patents Help Fight Frivolous Lawsuits?
Reben's All Prior Art is a website that algorithmically generates and publishes roughly 36,000 invention ideas a minute as "prior art," aiming to preempt the frivolous patents that fuel patent-troll lawsuits.
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This Website Is Using Math to Create Every Possible Patent
Reben's website All Prior Art algorithmically generates artificial inventions from existing patent language and publishes them under a Creative Commons license as prior art, seeking to democratize ideas and block patent trolls.
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8 Real-Life Robots That Inspired Big Hero 6
Boxie — the small cardboard interviewing robot Reben built at the MIT Media Lab — is listed among eight real-life robots that inspired the design of Disney's Big Hero 6.
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Domesticated Robots And The Art Of Being Human
In an interview with Tania Lombrozo, Reben discusses his BlabDroids — cute robots that roam asking people personal questions — and his idea of "domesticated" technology coevolving with humans like dogs from wolves.
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As You Watch, Invasion of the Platforms
At the Tribeca Film Festival's transmedia Storyscapes program, Reben's Robots in Residence deploys small BlabDroids that interview attendees for a documentary directed entirely by robots.
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These Adorable Robots Are Making a Documentary About Humans. Really
Reben's BlabDroids — small, cute cardboard robots — roam the Tribeca Film Festival interviewing attendees to assemble what's billed as the first documentary directed entirely by robots.