Hello 👋 Welcome to ICBINA (aka I Can’t Believe It’s Not Art!), an NFT art collection powered by AI. It was created as a submission to Claire Silver’s “Rebuttal” art contest in Jan 2023 by @femmedecentral.

AI Art is about embracing the joy and beauty of randomness, chaos and unpredictability. It isn’t displacing traditional artists; it’s creating an entirely new genre of art. This NFT collection of AI-generated images leans into these ideas, and the final product will be an artifact of the controversy of AI art. The entire NFT collection is my submission to the contest, as the full collection was the only way to capture the nature of the debate and the unpredictability of AI art.

Note: This NFT is currently deployed on Ethereum Goerli Test Network and can be viewed here. I will not deploy to mainnet until the results of the contest are final. All artwork referenced below is for demonstration, as attributes and final art will need to be rolled at mint-time.

What is the NFT collection?

ICBINA is a collection of 200 NFTs, where each piece of AI-generated art can be minted using a function called aiArtIsArt() or aiArtIsNotArt():

If minting with aiArtIsArt():
- The final image will be generated with Midjourney using a fine-tuned GPT-3 model based on the random attributes assigned to the token at mint time. The model has been trained to produce prompts in my preferred style and subject matter.
- A 0 ETH+ mint, no payment is required, but a suggested donation of .025 ETH allows the minter to express the value of the AI image to them.
If minting with aiArtIsNotArt():
- The minter will receive a token with no attributes and points to an image that says “Not A Art”
- A free mint, as it is a vote that AI art is worthless.

Working as a system, this art piece can generate a wide variety of scenarios that can be pointed towards when discussing the AI Art Controversy.

Here is a screenshot of OpenSea for the first 15 images produced on the testnet version

Here is a screenshot of OpenSea for the first 15 images produced on the testnet version

What does this piece “say” about AI Art?

I’m excited about the ICBINA project because I don’t know what to expect, and I find that to be beautiful. Here are a few possible scenarios and how each scenario might contribute to the conversation about AI art:

Scenario	What can we say?
A majority mint of aiIsArt() & a majority donates to the artist.	A lot of folks find value in AI art and are willing to contribute to its existence.
A majority mint of aiIsArt() & minority donates to the artist.	A lot of folks find value in collecting AI art but don’t find it to be very valuable.
The collection is a pretty even split between aiArtIsArt() and aiArtIsNotArt().	Either this will be proof that there’s still a lot of controversy or that art collectors like having a full set. Or maybe a third thing…
A majority mint aiArtIsNotArt(), but there’s a substantial donation to the artist.	There’s a vocal minority that finds value in this AI art… as has been the case for many styles for a long time.
A majority mint aiArtIsNotArt() and there are few/no donations.	A lot of people are willing to spend time and gas on saying that AI art isn’t real. They must be scared of something…
A bot mints a lot of aiArtIsNotArt().	One person is willing to spend a lot of time, energy and gas on saying AI art isn’t real. My heart goes out to that person.
The collection has very few mints.	This art piece wasn’t very valuable or interesting beyond me. Better luck next time to me. :)

What is the NFT collection?

What does this piece “say” about AI Art?

How was AI used?