LinkedIn founder turns DALL-E’s AI creations into NFT Solana

Reid Hoffman uses OpenAI’s AI-powered image rendering platform to generate NFT artworks for auction via Magic Eden.

Billionaire entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, best known for co-founding LinkedIn, releases a series of NFTs on Solana based on images he creates using OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 artificial intelligence software.

Reid Hoffman announced the initiative today on Twitter, noting that he will auction off the first piece today on Magic Eden, the largest NFT Solana marketplace.

The project, titled Untranslatable Wordswill include 11 pieces of tokenized images originally created by DALL-E 2, which generates art from written messages.

“Anyone can right-click an original DALL-E and make an infinite number of copies“, he wrote. “Enter: NFTs, a technology to make a digital asset rare and unique. What happens when you combine two of the most important technological changes? How might they work together?“

Inspired by the potential of DALL-E and NFTs – and the possibilities that they unleash together – my team and I have created a number of small image collections that we’ll be tokenizing as NFTs.

The first collection debuts on Magic Eden today.

Here’s why I’m experimenting:

– Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) July 21, 2022

The first piece in the collection, “mångata“, is up for auction and has a current maximum bid of 12 SOL, or about $517. The Swedish term means “the reflection of the moon on the water, similar to a road“, according to the Magic Eden announcement. Reid Hoffman wrote that he was inspired by “words that exist in another language for which there is no equivalent in your own language“.

He plans to divide the funds generated by each work among charitable causes and his team of collaborators. Any NFT not purchased at auction will be burned, or permanently destroyed.

Images of DALL-E 2 have been widely shared on the Internet since the latest iteration of the OpenAI platform was announced in April. The software creates a variety of artworks from user-supplied text and can produce surprisingly accurate results, even from combinations of unrelated terms.

While full of potential, OpenAI recognizes that its technology also requires thoughtful policies to reduce abuse and bias.

Until yesterday, commercialization of DALL-E 2-generated images was prohibited by OpenAI, as the project was still in the “preview“. The project documentation even specifically mentions that the sale of NFTs is prohibited by the terms and conditions.

However, OpenAI released a new beta version yesterday that allows marketing rights for creators who generate images, apparently allowing Hoffman’s NFT project to exist. He is a board member of OpenAI and has written extensively about DALL-E on his LinkedIn page.

“Visual expression cannot exist without technology“, Hoffman wrote on Wednesday. “Great artists have always been great innovators. If revolutionary artists like Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo were alive today, I’m sure they would be experimenting with DALL-E.“