Suddenly I find that my daily eBay search for typewriters is cluttered with hundreds of terrible AI-generated images, available to order as prints on canvas. When I say terrible, I mean 2023 quality, which could practically be considered medieval by today's AI standards. Who is generating these things? And who, if anyone, is buying them?
By the way, some folks seem to have gotten the impression that the MAINSPRINGS project is encouraging the use of AI. No! Some AI may be allowed if it's honest and artistically appropriate, but the point of the project is to invite imaginative explorations of encounters between AI and typewriters. Those encounters may be hostile (I expect most of them will be), and they can be dreamed up without any digital assistance.
Meanwhile, I got up at 4 am on Saturday to watch the latest Breker auction in Cologne. I even bid on a couple of machines, but was immediately overwhelmed by other collectors with deep pockets. Here are a few highlights (the prices shown are the selling prices in all cases; note the buyer's premium that must be added!).
That McCool was a relatively good deal. This Sholes & Glidden and Fitch brought much less than their estimates:
The source of these images is screenshots from the Invaluable app, which makes it seductively easy to bid on auctions on another continent!
