BMW has long been associated with the world of fine art, most notably via its iconic Art Car project in which artists like Andy Warhol used BMW vehicles as canvases for original artwork. But in 2021 this 100-year-old luxury automaker needed to bring something new to the art world to engage with today’s tastemakers and insert BMW into the cultural conversation.

Following a tradition of inviting artists to create artwork for specific models, BMW tapped AI to create an ever-changing art piece—generating an infinite loop of beautiful digital art that will inspire BMW fans for years to come. The Ultimate AI Masterpiece is the ultimate experiment in how data can be a collaborative tool for human creators.

We turned BMW into an ever-changing art piece. By covering over 900 years of art history, we fed a unique data set with nearly 50,000 paintings to artificial intelligence. We then freed the AI to generate evolving forms and textures to project them onto the BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe’s surface—generating an infinite loop of beautiful digital art.

This kind of AI is called a GAN—Nvidia’s StyleGAN—which can find and then replicate patterns in the input data set, from forms and textures to colors and styles of painting on canvas.

Targeting today’s tastemakers, we teamed up with HYPEBEAST and promoted posts on digital and social channels such as YouTube and Instagram to insert BMW into the cultural conversation.

With an estimated 50 million media impressions among video views, website visits and social engagements, The Ultimate AI Masterpiece achieved remarkable results at a brand level. It not only generated an ever-changing digital art gallery that culminated in an exclusive exhibition at Frieze New York but also inserted this 100-year-old luxury automaker into the cultural conversation—a legacy that will inspire BMW fans for years to come.