- New installation at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie features robot dogs with hyper-realistic silicone heads
- Some of the biggest figures in technology are represented, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
- They also “defecate” printed images captured with built-in cameras and enhanced with custom AI.
If you haven’t yet seen videos of the artwork “Regular Animals” by American artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), you’re probably suffering from a serious lack of context and confusion at this headline.
The installation, currently located in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, features free-roaming robot dogs with hyper-realistic silicone heads, some of which are sculpted in the likeness of renowned tech figures such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Others represent famous artists such as Pablo Picasso or Andy Warhol; all individuals with, in one way or another, unique perspectives on the world.
It’s those perspectives that form the backbone of Winkelmann’s work, as the Unitree Go2 robot dogs will “defecate” printed images while autonomously wandering around the room. These images are captured by built-in cameras and processed by AI, producing prints that reflect the perspective of each robodog character.
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Is it raw? Perhaps, but the installation and dark humor have certainly started a conversation inside and outside the technological sphere.
In this latest project of viral fame, Beeple raises a question that perhaps more of us should be asking: Should our worldview be governed by technology and the powerful figures who control it?
It’s an especially pertinent question in the post-AI world we live in, where lax regulations, extraordinary market disruptions, and a race to the bottom converge, leaving in their wake a mess of questionable ethics and environmental impacts.
It’s also something we briefly discussed on the latest episode of the TechRadar Podcast, specifically in relation to a recent New Yorker profile on Sam Altman and the reaction that followed, where my colleague Hamish Hector noted the growing public awareness (and controversy) around figures like Altman.
“This plays into this broader understanding that these figures at the top of the AI sphere, like Sam Altman for OpenAI, Elon Musk for Grok, and Mark Zuckerberg for Meta, maybe we should be interested in what these people are like and how they behave,” he explains.
Watch the latest episode of the podcast below from 42:56 to hear our summary of the current discourse on AI ethics, biases, and perspectives from the tech executives leading the conversation.
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That message is largely the stated intention of Winkelmann, who told the Associated Press: “In the past, our view of the world was determined in part by how artists saw the world. The way Picasso painted changed the way we saw the world, how Warhol talked about consumerism, pop culture, that changed the way he saw those things.”
He goes on to explain that in the current climate, our collective view of the world is shaped by tech billionaires who control the narrative with powerful algorithms.
“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 pressure the UN. They don’t need to get Congress or the EU to approve something, they just wake up and change these algorithms.”
Beeple is no stranger to the union between technology and art; He has addressed movements such as everyday art trends with his long-term project. every daywhich has seen him create and publish a new piece of digital art daily since 2007. His work also helped launch the art market for NFTs, and he even previously gave away photos taken by his robot dogs to audience members during a previous appearance at the Art Basel 2025 event, some of which included QR codes giving access to free NFTs of Beeple’s digital art.
Whether or not you agree that the installation is “art,” it’s a surprisingly poignant message for a project that consists of expensive robot dogs with incredibly precise silicone masks that expel AI waste.
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