Our AI is trained with 14 million images and with a vast dataset of related keywords. It then learns what each of these looks like as more and more noise is added to it. So then when we give it a phrase to try and create the art, it starts with random noise and attempts to de-noise the photo over several stages, scoring itself higher (and so influencing the path it takes) if it gets closer to any of the noisy versions associated with those keywords.
One such image takes between 25 and 250 iterations to get to a finished piece, and would take a regular computer with a standard GPU several minutes, even hours, so we hired virtual servers on the Google cloud and custom-built our own virtual machines.
The GPUs on these sell for $20k each for the GPU alone - so we hired them on a use-per-second basis and I sat up all night babysitting four of them off and on over the course of a week to generate 10,000 monkeys. We lovingly called them Micro Organized Neural Knowledge Engine - MONKE.
We had to throw away the very first batch even though it ate up almost a thousand dollars, since the AI was giving us too many fairies dancing in meadows or demons made of clouds, but not quite remembering to still make it look like a monkey.
I also happen to be friends with a great blockchain developer and web designer and he was able to give the artwork a home on the blockchain as NFTs. I think there's still a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation out there around NFTs but that is now quickly changing. It's true that anyone can copy and save a screenshot of an NFT but only the current owner can trade that NFT to collectors on the blockchain. You could have a postcard of the Mona Lisa, but good luck selling that at auction. NFTs give the artist irrefutable proof of ownership on a ledger. And when that piece is sold down the line, the original creator gets royalty. To me as an artist, that's the best part. Artists can put their work out there without worrying about where it will go.
Apes are popular in the NFT world primarily on the back of the success of the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. An 'ape' in the crypto sense is someone who buys big into a project, so the bored ape became popular with big collectors who saw themselves as their bored ape profile pics. The market is now saturated with profile-pic collections that people will try to buy and flip (sell for profit), so we went another route and just made art that people would enjoy collecting and holding. Which is why we also made the mint price 0.01 eth (around $10) instead of the usual $500 each because we want everyone to be able to enjoy collecting our little monkeys.
The Artsy Monke collection sold out yesterday, so it is now only available on the secondary market on OpenSea.
We were no. 1 most trending yesterday on most NFT websites and tools and it all happened fast!
