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Robot dogs with hyper-realistic faces of tech billionaires that crap out a piece of artificial intelligence-generated art are doing the rounds at a Berlin exhibition by the American artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple.
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At the Neue Nationalgalerie, Winkelmann has installed a striking series of robotic dogs fitted with silicone heads modelled on some of the most recognisable figures in tech and culture, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, alongside historical figures such as Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso and the artist himself, Beeple.
The installation, titled Regular Animals, presents the figures not as distant icons, but as restless machines wandering the gallery space – part spectacle, part satire.
Each robot is equipped with cameras that capture its surroundings and then “process” them into printed images, which are ejected in a tongue-in-cheek gesture that mimics digestion.
Each printed image shows a snippet of reality transformed by AI to resemble the personality of the dog. So, for example, the Picasso dog poos a cubist-shaped dog, the Andy Warhol robot poos out an image in a pop art style.
According to Winkelmann, the show is a commentary on how our perceptions are shaped by algorithms and technology platforms, and the tech billionaires who own them.
“In the past our view of the world was shaped in part by how artists saw the world, how Picasso painted changed how we saw the world, how Warhol talked about consumerism, pop culture, changed how we saw those things. Now our view of the world is shaped by tech billionaires who own powerful algorithms that decide what we see and what we don’t see, how much we see of it,” says Winkelmann.
“That’s an immense amount of power that I don’t think we’ve fully understood, especially because when they want to make a change, they don’t need to lobby the U.N. They don’t need to get something through Congress or the EU, they just wake up and change these algorithms.”
“Regular Animals” was first shown at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025.
Beeple’s own background is as a graphic designer who does a variety of digital artworks.
He is one of the founders of the “everyday” movement in 3D graphics. For years, he has been creating a picture every day and posting it online without missing a single day.
The dogs also wear heads in Beeple’s own image.
Lisa Botti, the curator of the exhibition in Berlin, says that artificial intelligence was one of the phenomena most impacting our lives today and that “museums are the places where society can reflect” on such transformations, which is why she wanted to have Beeple’s work shown.
The work, entitled “Regular Animals,” was first shown at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025.
He is one of the founders of the “everyday” movement in 3D graphics. For years, he has been creating a picture every day and posting it online without missing a single day.
According to Christie’s, he is the third most expensive living artist to sell at auction, after David Hockney and Jeff Koons.
