In 2022, we stepped into what I like to call the 'everything-AI' era. This transformative wave may not be immediately apparent to many, but it has already fundamentally changed how we create and consume content, art included. AI revolution, powered by easy-to-use tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, and further accelerated by meme culture, has led to a massive increase in digital creativity. The quality of this new AI creations are reaching levels that increasingly blur the lines between human-made/captured and machine-generated. Today, it's almost impossible to tell them apart, showing that we've crossed a point of no return.

This significant event ignited my curiosity. What were the beginnings of AI art and AI content creation? What was the path to this significant change that now affects billions of people? Who were the first to experiment with machine-generated creativity, and who were the pioneers of this shift?

The earliest steps with AI and computer-generated art can be traced back to the mid-20th century, but a major leap forward happened about a decade ago. The invention of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in 2014 and the DeepDream algorithm in 2015 were like the first brushstrokes on a nearly blank canvas. The 'UnderTheGAN' collection aims to highlight these foundational moments, giving viewers a chance to understand the journey to the AI world we live in today and the pioneers behind it.

The Ethereum blockchain, introduced in 2015, revolutionized digital art by enabling asset tokenization. This allowed for unique 'ownership' of digital items, transforming easily copied artworks into scarce, provable assets. This development had a significant impact on AI-generated art, as it could now be uniquely owned and verified. In 2018, around 400 early AI artworks were minted and claimed on the blockchain, signaling the start of this now 'ownable' art form. By 2019, the number rose to just under 4000, showing increasing interest. Post-2020, the volume of minted AI artworks became so vast that it's impossible to accurately determine.

The mission of the 'UnderTheGAN' collection is to research, acquire, and present the earliest AI artworks in existence, whose authenticity and provenance are indisputable and verifiable due to their tokenized nature. This collection presents the works of a select group of pioneers who played a significant role in fueling the AI art revolution we are experiencing today. Jediwolf

Early Pioneers of AI Art