Digital artist Pebble put his face on a $100,000 robot dog next to Elon Musk and Picasso — sold first

Mike Winkleman, the digital artist known as Beeple, has put himself at the center of the pack — literally — with his latest ubiquitous installation at Art Basel Miami Beach, and there’s still time to see it until Sunday.

His “Regular Animals” project features $100,000 robotic dogs fitted with hyper-realistic heads that resemble Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, along with art legends Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Robotic dogs wander around in a glass pen, capture images through chest-mounted cameras that are processed by artificial intelligence and then essentially spit them out, according to the Wall Street Journal. Of the prints produced, 256 prints include a QR code that provides collectors with a free NFT, distributed in bags marked “stool sample.”

Beeple also included himself in this exclusive group, a move that the Charleston-based artist himself called “ballsy.” He told the newspaper that his dog, which bore his self-portrait, sold first, which surprised even Pebble.

The project marks at least the second time Winckelmann has become a major figure in the art world. Four years ago, his digital collection sold at Christie’s for $69 million, helping fuel the NFT boom that peaked a year later before largely collapsing.