Digital artist Beeple sells $100K robot dog featuring his face alongside Elon Musk and Picasso

Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, has placed himself at the heart of the action with his latest installation at Art Basel Miami Beach, which remains open to visitors until Sunday. His project, titled "Regular Animals," showcases $100,000 robotic dogs with incredibly realistic heads resembling figures such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and iconic artists like Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.

The robotic dogs roam inside a plexiglass enclosure, capturing images through cameras mounted on their chests. These images are processed by artificial intelligence, ultimately resulting in prints that are described as being "pooped out," according to the Wall Street Journal. Among the prints produced, 256 include QR codes that grant collectors a free NFT. These NFTs are distributed in bags labeled "Excrement Sample."

Beeple made sure to include his own face in this collection, a bold decision that he referred to as "ballsy." To his surprise, his self-portrait robot dog was the first to sell, a development that even caught Beeple off guard, as he shared with the Journal.

This project marks the second time in recent years that Beeple has become a major figure in the art world. Four years ago, his digital collage was sold at Christies for a record-breaking $69 million, a sale that played a pivotal role in the rise of NFTs, a market that would see explosive growth before largely deflating a year later.