- A new installation at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie features robotic dogs with hyperrealistic silicone heads
- Some of technology’s biggest figureheads, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, are pictured
- They also “poop” out printed images taken with integrated cameras and augmented with custom AI
If you haven’t already seen videos of American artist Beeple’s (Mike Winkelmann) artwork “Regular Animals”, you’re probably suffering from a severe lack of context and confusion at this headline.
The installation, currently housed in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, features free-roaming robotic dogs with hyper-realistic silicone heads, some of which are sculpted in the likeness of well-known tech figures such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Others depict famous artists such as Pablo Picasso or Andy Warhol; all individuals with in one way or another unique perspectives on the world.
It is these perspectives that form the backbone of Winkelmann’s work, as the Unitree Go2 robot dogs will “pop” out printed images as they autonomously roam the hall. These images are captured by integrated cameras and processed by AI, producing prints that reflect each robodog persona’s perspective.
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Is it raw? Maybe, but the installation and the dark humor have certainly been a conversation starter in and out of the tech sphere.
In this latest project of viral fame, Beeple asks a question that perhaps more of us should be asking: Should our worldview be governed by technology and the powerful individuals who control it?
It’s a particularly pertinent question in the post-AI world we live in, where lax regulations, extraordinary market disruptions and a race to the finish line come together to leave a mess of questionable ethics and environmental impact.
It’s also something we briefly discussed on the latest episode of the TechRadar Podcast, specifically related to a recent New Yorker profile on Sam Altman and the backlash that followed, with my colleague Hamish Hector noting the growing public awareness — and controversy — surrounding people like Altman.
“It plays into this larger realization that these figures at the very top of the AI sphere, like Sam Altman for OpenAI, Elon Musk for Grok and Mark Zuckerberg for Meta, that maybe we should be interested in what these people are like and how they behave,” he explains.
Check out the latest podcast episode below 42:56 to hear our summary of the current discourse around AI ethics, bias and the perspectives of the technical leaders leading the conversation.
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That message is very much the stated intent of Winkelmann, who told the Associated Press: “In the past, our view of the world was partly shaped by how artists saw the world. How Picasso painted changed how we saw the world, how Warhol talked about consumerism, pop culture, that changed how he saw those things.”
He goes on to explain that in today’s climate, our collective worldview is shaped by tech billionaires who control the narrative with powerful algorithms.
“It’s a huge amount of power that I don’t think we’ve fully understood, especially because when they want to make a change, they don’t have to lobby the UN. They don’t have to get anything through Congress or the EU, they just wake up and change these algorithms.”
Beeple is no stranger to the intersection of technology and art; he is at the forefront of movements such as artwork-a-day trends with his long-running project everyday lifewhich has seen him create and release a new piece of digital art daily since 2007. His work also helped launch the art marketplace for NFTs and even previously gave away the photos taken by his robotic dogs to audience members during a previous appearance at the Art Basel 2025 event, some of which included QR codes that gave access to free NFTs of Beeple’s digital art.
Whether or not you agree that the installation is “art” aside, it’s a surprisingly poignant message for a project that consists of expensive robot dogs in eerily accurate silicon masks popping out AI slop.
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