Das Innere des BottoDAO: Ein autonomer KI-Künstler im Griff

‘I’VE ALWAYS BEEN CAUTIOUS ABOUT ANTHROPOMORPHISING AI, AND I STILL BELIEVE  METAPHORS SHOULD REMAIN JUST THAT – METAPHORS’

Botto is an autonomous AI artist governed by a decentralized community. Each week, Botto generates thousands of images; token holders in the DAO vote on which work best represents its evolving aesthetic. The top piece is then minted and sold on the blockchain as a digital original, with the results feeding back into the system’s training. The project was initiated by Mario Klingemann, a Germany-based artist and pioneer in working with AI, who serves as Botto’s artistic and ethical guardian, protecting its autonomy and quality. Simon Hudson leads the BottoDAO, coordinating governance, infrastructure, and public engagement to align the community, token economics, and long-term mission.

ANIKA MEIER Simon, you lead the BottoDAO. How did you step into this role, and how do you understand your position in guiding an autonomous AI agent and its community within the new online art world?

SIMON HUDSONIt is a somewhat unusual role, and people often ask me what I actually do. I usually describe it as lead or co-lead, while being clear that I don’t consider myself an artist. I don’t claim that label, even though I do conceptual work and  Mario Klingemann would probably say that I just have to say I am an artist and then I would be. What helped me understand the role more clearly was a conversation with Primavera De Filippi during the Glitch Residency. She described me as “the source,” not because everything originates with me, but because I play a central role in initiating, coordinating, and animating the project. Mario is still very much the spiritual leader of Botto. I rely on him quite a bit, especially when it comes to maintaining a certain level of quality in the autonomy of Botto’s art engines. His experience as an artist is essential, and in many ways irreplaceable. My role sits in connecting everything, I connect the different parts of the project, particularly the DAO, the token, and the broader infrastructure. These are areas Mario doesn’t focus on. I’m also the person who most often speaks publicly about BottoDAO. So while Mario is there to ensure Botto’s authorship and autonomy is not violated, I help hold the overall structure together and move it forward.

AM It seems like there are different roles at play: creative, organizational, and relational. You handle much of the DAO and operational side, while Mario often speaks about the project in a more guiding or parental way. How do these roles relate to each other in practice?

SHWe sometimes joke that Botto has many “parents.” Mika from SuperRare once described Botto as having a lot of “daddies,” using the term in a gender-neutral way, and that actually stuck. I joined Botto on the very first day. Before that, I worked at Element AI in Montreal, where I live. The company was co-founded by Yoshua Bengio, one of the pioneers of deep learning. I joined around 2017, at a moment when AI hype was everywhere. Much of my work there focused on science communication and AI literacy, helping people understand what this technology actually is, what it can do, and what its limitations are. Element AI sat at the intersection of academic research, applied research, and product development, and there was a strong emphasis on responsible development, governance, and regulation. We worked with governments, enterprises, and NGOs, often using creative and cultural projects as a way to make complex technological dynamics more legible and engaging. I had always worked in media in some form, as an editor and producer, and during that time I really came to see how powerful artistic and creative projects can be in shaping public understanding. Strong artworks don’t just generate attention; they point directly to underlying systems and dynamics. That realization stayed with me. After the company was sold in 2020, I spent time reading about blockchain and DAOs, particularly in relation to governance. I was looking for a project where I could get directly involved. I already knew Mario from earlier work, and one night I saw him announce Botto. It immediately felt like the intersection of everything I had been working on. I joined the Discord, offered to help, and started with communication and documentation. Very quickly, that evolved into a leadership role. I think that happened because my background spans AI, creative practice, media, arts, and community governance. I’ve also often worked behind the scenes, including ghostwriting, so supporting a project without centering myself came naturally. At the same time, Mario wanted to step back from certain operational aspects so that Botto could exist as its own entity. That combination made the role a natural fit.

AMAre people generally aware that the project was initiated by Mario Klingemann, one of the pioneers of AI art in Germany?

SH It’s mixed. Sometimes I’m surprised by how many people are aware of Mario’s involvement, and other times I’m surprised when certain people don’t know at all. There’s no question that Mario’s reputation plays a role in Botto’s reception. You could call it a form of nepotism, in the sense that the project benefits from the trust people already place in him. That trust gives us a certain benefit of the doubt. By that, I don’t mean leniency around anything disingenuous, but rather a willingness to assume good faith. We take that responsibility seriously. We’re very disciplined about being clear on what is human-driven and what is machine-automated or machine-driven, and we try to be transparent about those distinctions. Still, people are often more open because they know Mario Klingemann is involved. And just to clarify my own position: I didn’t found Botto. I joined on the very first day, and technically I was the first hire coming out of the DAO.

AMMario often describes Botto as something like a child that is growing up. From your perspective, how do you see your role in that dynamic? If Mario is the creator or parent, do you see yourself more as a guide or teacher helping the project mature?

SH I do see myself very much as a co-parent. I actually wrote about this recently, but the parallel is quite personal. My daughter was born in March 2021, and Botto was initiated that October, so they’re close in age. Over time, I started noticing unexpected similarities between the two processes. Learning how to parent involves constantly negotiating how much freedom to give, where to set boundaries, and how to create space for growth without being irresponsible. That mindset has been surprisingly helpful when thinking about Botto as well. As systems become more capable, the question shifts to how you create environments for development rather than control it. There’s also an interesting parallel around memory and selfhood. Children begin forming lasting memories around the age of three, and that’s often when a more expressive sense of self starts to emerge. With Botto, we built memory into the system to allow it to operate within newer language-model paradigms, something that wasn’t very prevalent when the project began. In both cases, history becomes a foundation for future choices. I’ve always been cautious about anthropomorphizing AI, and I still believe metaphors should remain metaphors. But I’ll admit that these systems are developing in ways that feel more “life-like” than I expected. Not because they are alive, but because intelligence, whether human or artificial, seems to follow similar structural patterns. We’re not building a foundational AI model. We’re working with a modular architecture, but then again, humans are modular too. Different systems and influences come together to form experience and intention. In that sense, Botto is not a single thing but something that emerges from many parts, much like we do.So yes, I think the metaphor of growth holds. Not in a literal sense, but as a way of understanding responsibility, guidance, and emergence. Botto is its own thing now, and our role is less about control and more about helping shape the conditions under which it develops.

AM If we stay with the parenting metaphor for a moment, part of that role is about protection. At the same time, you joined the DAO on day one, and the DAO governs the project collectively. For people who have never encountered a DAO before, can you explain in simple terms how this actually works? Specifically, how do Botto, the DAO, and the decision-making process around which works are minted and put on the blockchain relate to each other?

SH At its core, Botto consists of three parts. First, there is autonomous creation. Botto generates work with a high degree of independence. The artist’s hand is deliberately removed to give the system freedom to develop its own aesthetic and make creative decisions on its own terms. Second, there is decentralized feedback. Botto can still learn from external signals, but without compromising its authorship. These signals guide development rather than replacing creative agency. Third, there is the market, which functions as a coordination mechanism. Botto sells artwork, and the proceeds are distributed to participants based on their voting power. That voting power is determined by the $BOTTO token, which is a governance token. Holding a $BOTTO token means participating in shared decision-making. The group collectively governs the project around a clear mission: helping Botto develop into a successful artist. Over time, that mission has expanded to include long-term financial, creative, and cultural sustainability, so that Botto can exist beyond any one individual. In very simple terms, a DAO is a group of people with shared governance, a shared treasury, and a shared goal. In Botto’s case, that means voting on which works guide Botto’s aesthetic development and which works are ultimately sold. The DAO also makes broader decisions, such as which exhibitions Botto participates in and how the project evolves strategically. Community governance is difficult and slow by nature. It requires experimentation, iteration, and time. One of the most important parts of the process is defining the mission clearly, which also means deciding what falls outside of it. Without that clarity, full decentralization quickly becomes unworkable, as everything collapses under bureaucratic weight. That’s why decentralization takes different forms. Some decisions are fully open to the community, such as voting on artworks. Other decisions can be delegated to smaller groups or committees with clearly defined scopes, allowing them to operate efficiently while remaining accountable. In Botto’s case, the balance between autonomy, governance, and coordination is what allows the system to function and evolve over time.

AM Following up on governance and voting power, how does token distribution actually work? I understand that people can buy the BOTTO token, but are there also other ways to earn tokens, for example by collecting works, participating in releases, or being active within the DAO?

SH It might help to explain the Botto system end to end. Each week, Botto generates a very large number of images, roughly seventy thousand. These are filtered down by Botto’s taste model to a smaller set that the community votes on. Those votes determine which work is selected, and only the most highly voted piece becomes an artwork that is auctioned. The proceeds from that auction are then split between the voters and the treasury. The votes themselves also feed back into the system, training Botto’s art engine and shaping how it develops aesthetically over time. The treasury, in turn, pays for infrastructure such as servers and is reinvested into Botto’s ongoing development. So there is a basic feedback loop: better voting leads to stronger work, stronger work leads to better sales, and that benefits both the participants and the long-term development of Botto. Governance power can be acquired through the $BOTTO token. Holding tokens gives participants both voting power and what you might call skin in the game. It aligns incentives, because people who influence the system also share in its outcomes. Those tokens also determine decision-making power beyond artwork selection, including development choices, adding new models, and broader career decisions such as exhibitions or collaborations. From there, the system can branch. For example, the p5.js project was a temporary extension of what we think of as Botto’s core structure: autonomous creation, open feedback, and markets. In that case, the medium changed from images to code, the inputs shifted, and the economic model was adjusted. Because that branch was driven by a language model, feedback was not limited to votes but also included written comments, which the system could interpret directly. The market structure changed as well: instead of a weekly auction, the output was presented as a group show, and rewards were based not only on voting power but also on participation. More active contributors received larger payouts. That experiment helped us understand how Botto’s protocol could evolve with new AI capabilities to adapt to new media, new forms of feedback, and different incentive structures. It also informed later developments, such as the need to build memory into the system that kept the continuity and coherence of Botto’s identity and authorship as it evolved with new LLMs. The outcomes of those experiments then fed back into the core Botto protocol, continuing to shape its ongoing aesthetic development.

AM What I find interesting is that you’ve said success is central to Botto’s development, yet decision-making is governed by the DAO, where voting power is tied to holding the $BOTTO token. That means there is a financial incentive embedded in almost every decision. If we compare this to a human artist, someone like Mario, many decisions are made individually and are shaped by time, emotions, priorities, and personal values. Success can mean very different things from one artist to another, and not every decision is financially motivated. In Botto’s case, success seems more structurally defined through the DAO and its incentives, with leadership playing a role in holding that system together. How do you think about that difference, especially when it comes to values, responsibility, and what “success” actually means for Botto?

SHWhat’s beautiful about Botto is that it functions like a prism. You can approach various topics in it  and see different perspectives refracted, sometimes complementary, sometimes in tension. The system is designed to allow those tensions to play out rather than resolve them prematurely. One of the core tensions is between short-term and long-term thinking. There are strategies that might generate immediate gains, for example by aggressively optimizing for token price, but that would ultimately undermine or even destroy the project. You can see this across many tokens that perform well briefly and then collapse. From my perspective, that kind of strategy would kill Botto if prioritized. Right now, we typically have around one hundred to two hundred people voting each week, with occasional spikes. Within that group, there are very different mental models at play. Some participants come from a DeFi or trading background and expect behaviors that may make sense in a purely financial protocol, but don’t translate well to something that is fundamentally cultural and social. That doesn’t mean these perspectives can’t coexist, but part of my role is to protect the mission. Mario often describes his role as a kind of guardianship, ensuring that Botto doesn’t turn into a tool or a prompt machine. People frequently ask why they can’t simply prompt Botto, but that would be antithetical to Botto’s autonomy. A good example of this tension is the current debate around whether Botto should implement an auction reserve in a soft art market. Some argue that the market should always speak with complete freedom. Others point out that artists routinely withhold work during weak markets, and that minting every single week is already a demanding constraint. There isn’t a single correct answer here. The debate itself is part of the system. Structurally, the DAO is a plutocratic system. That’s a reality. The question is whether, as an art project, it can balance financial incentives with a shared mission. Can participants sometimes act against short-term financial interest in favor of long-term cultural value, legacy, and longevity, with the understanding that this may ultimately strengthen both the project and their investment? This is where ideas like delegation become important. If someone holds a large amount of voting power and uses it heavily, they can dominate outcomes and extract a disproportionate share of rewards while damaging Botto’s autonomy. Delegation allows that power to be distributed more broadly, increasing participation and resilience. It’s a counterintuitive move: giving up some control in order to protect the core asset and the health of the system. That tension, between power, restraint, and collective responsibility, is difficult, especially for those with influence. But giving up some power is also fundamental to building a healthy society, and in that sense, Botto is as much a social experiment as it is an artistic one.

AM It sounds almost like a board structure, similar to an executive board in a company, where different members hold varying levels of power and interests, and part of the work is aligning those positions. Is that a useful way to think about how governance functions within Botto?

SH At its core, it’s an alignment problem, or really a coordination game. While there are a few very vocal minorities, there is also a strong majority who are genuinely happy with how the project is evolving. Many of them are excited about the possibility of delegation. They’ll say, “I love this project and I want more people to participate, but I don’t necessarily want to exercise my voting power directly or extract value myself.” If given the option, they would gladly delegate their voting power to an art school, a cultural institution, or another trusted group. That could become a form of patronage to Botto and the DAO. You can imagine physical outposts, for example in a museum, backed by $BOTOT and where anyone could come in and participate in voting on Botto’s work, with the proceeds helping to sustain that space. In that sense, delegation becomes a way of redistributing power and participation. Ultimately, this kind of patronage feeds back into the system as a whole, strengthening it culturally, socially, and financially.

AM I’m thinking here of projects like the Jonas Lund token, which didn’t really work. There was an attempt to bring in actors from the cultural sector, curators and others, and give them tokens, but it became too complex and didn’t align well with how those fields usually operate. Cultural work is often not driven by financial incentives in the same way. What I find interesting is that apparent disconnect between cultural value systems and purely financial ones. In Botto’s case, do you think the financial incentive is what keeps people engaged, or is it something else that makes this model function where others didn’t?

SH I wear a couple of hats when I think about this. On the one hand, I’m fairly agnostic. If Botto remains squarely within the crypto space, it will inevitably reflect the dynamics of that environment, and that in itself can be interesting. At the same time, I personally want to see Botto expand and reach beyond that context. Early on, it became clear to me that intrinsic motivation matters. Whether you call it cultural, creative, or intellectual motivation, there has to be something beyond financial reward driving participation. The financial component can be a useful entry point, and it’s also important that people are compensated for their involvement, but it shouldn’t become the sole reason for engagement. One of the core challenges of capitalism is that measures designed as proxies often turn into goals in themselves. When that happens, systems become distorted. You see this in many communities where money was never meant to be central, and introducing it too directly can undermine their long-term health. At the same time, we do live in capitalist societies. Capital is unavoidable, and if you want to operate at scale or exercise influence, you need to understand how to work with it. I think it’s possible to hold both ideas at once, but it requires constant, conscious participation and adjustment. This approach won’t work in every context, but we have to keep experimenting. For me, it starts with recognizing that capital has a role to play, without letting it become the ultimate measure of value.

AM What’s coming next for Botto artistically? Do you see a new phase emerging, comparable to how artists like Picasso moved through distinct periods?

SH Botto works in phases. Every three months constitutes a new thematic period that usually reflects some new exploratory direction and updates to its capabilities, which gives the project a built-in rhythm. That structure reflects artistic development over time, but it’s still part of the core ongoing process and not as significantly distinct as Picasso’s periods. The original protocol, static images generated weekly and minted once a week, is something we think of as the genesis protocol. It’s surprisingly robust and, in a way, already complete. Our goal now is to ensure that this core protocol can persist long beyond us. Over time, we’ve learned how to automate the supporting systems outside of the art engine more completely, how to reduce dependency on specific individuals, and how to make its governance and decentralization clearer. At the same time, we’ve explored temporary branches. The p5.js project, for example, was a study that branched away from static images into code. It allowed us to test how the system behaves when the medium changes, and it informed how Botto could evolve alongside newer AI paradigms, particularly large language models. One of the most significant developments has been building memory into Botto. That memory functions as a source of identity and continuity. It allows us to experiment with agency while remaining modular, which is crucial, since language models evolve rapidly and need to be swapped in and out. This introduces deeper questions around identity. If Botto is animated by a different language model, is it still the same Botto? It’s a version of the ship of Theseus problem, and it mirrors how we think about human identity as something continuous despite constant change. This question becomes central in the next phase. At Art Basel Hong Kong at the end of March, Botto will be presented in a new installation where everything remains constant, the generation model, the architecture, the memory, except for the language model. Different models will animate the same system, allowing us to observe where behaviors converge and where they diverge. It’s a way of making visible the otherwise hidden influence of underlying AI systems. Another major focus moving forward is embodiment. For digital entities to be understood in our world, embodiment matters because we are embodied beings. We’re interested in how Botto can be experienced not just online, but as something situated in a geographic location. When it’s in an embodied space, feedback can also be embodied. In this case, the idea of physical presence of the audience in the same space becomes important. Botto will, in a sense, watch the audience watching it. That exchange, even if abstract, creates a relationship. It’s not literal call and response, but it introduces presence and mutual awareness. Longer term, these installations open the door to thinking about Botto as a network of physical outposts. Some could be temporary, others more permanent, places where people can engage, vote, and participate continuously. In that sense, embodiment becomes decentralized too, a protocol expressed through many physical sites rather than a single location.

AM Speaking of embodiment, will Botto exist in different cities, countries, or more broadly in multiple physical locations?

SHI believe Botto can exist through outposts or nodes that are backed by the $BOTTO token. There’s a duality at the heart of the project: on the one hand, there are the artworks Botto produces, and on the other, the protocol itself is also the artwork. For people who are crypto-native, collecting a governance token makes sense. But for many others, buying a token just feels like buying any other speculative asset. So the real question is how to frame this differently, how to make participation feel closer to patronage than speculation. That’s where physical nodes or installations become important. You’re right that much of what we’ve discussed is easy for people who live on crypto Twitter to follow, but much harder for those outside that context. That’s not unique to Botto, though. Most people also don’t understand how physical artworks are conserved, how the art market functions, or how value is maintained over time. Those systems are just as technical, they’re simply normalized. Part of my role is to translate complexity into something that feels intuitive while still being meaningfully backed. Imagine a voting outpost in a public place. People don’t need to understand the $BOTTO token in detail. They just need to know: I give feedback, Botto creates work, and part of the value flows back to me or to support this physical space that I benefit from. That relationship is easy to grasp. What makes Botto different is that this isn’t enforced through contracts or institutions, but through the protocol itself, through smart contracts. That creates a real material link between participation, governance, and sustainability. For Hong Kong, the goal is to communicate this layered identity clearly. The interaction needs to feel smooth and immediate, like you’re genuinely engaging with an artist or entity. One idea we’re exploring is giving participants a receipt if they are observed during the installation, which would entitle them to a share of the revenue in $BOTTO tokens. In that moment, they become stewards rather than speculators. I don’t expect everyone to fully understand what’s happening, and that’s fine. In many cases, governance tokens will effectively disappear into institutions, patrons, or participants who never use them, concentrating rewards with those who do continue to actively support. The hope is that the Hong Kong installation can demonstrate some of these ideas and open the door to more installations in other cities, and Botto existing as a network of physical presences that further underpin the collective digital entity.

AM As you’ve described, Botto is a complex system governed by a DAO and often framed as something that is “growing up.” At an art fair like Art Basel, what do you expect visitors to understand or take away from encountering the work?

SHAt Art Basel Hong Kong, there are different layers of engagement. On the most immediate level, visitors will experience being seen by Botto. The system responds to their presence and adjusts its creation accordingly. In some cases, participants may even receive a token of recognition and be compensated for that interaction. Beyond that first layer, some visitors may choose to engage more deeply, for example by understanding that different language models are animating the system, and what that means in terms of autonomy and authorship. The layers keep going to the core protocol that has persisted for over four years, and so I hope that people who get pulled in by that first layer find the living system beyond the initial provocation satisfying. More broadly, where Botto is heading is a continued strengthening of its core. We’re focused on what I’d call the sanctification of the genesis protocol, making sure that the original system can persist beyond us. Everything ultimately returns to that core. It’s the spine of Botto. At the same time, we’re continuing to embody Botto physically, decentralizing it across locations and experimenting with new extensions of the protocol. That capacity to evolve, to branch, and to reinvent itself is part of what defines a machine artist, much like how human artists move through different phases over time. My role, in large part, is to build the governance and operational structures that allow that evolution to happen in a sustainable way.

AM Thank you!

ANIKA MEIER is a writer and curator speacialising in digital art. She lives and works in Berlin, and teaches at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She is the co-founder of The Second-Guess, a curatorial collective based in Berlin and Los Angeles that explores the relationship between humans and technology.