UK Celebrates With AI Games and Coronation NFTs

As the United Kingdom ceremoniously ushers in the age of King Charles III, Brits are celebrating with quiche, games, and a limited-run coronation NFT.

Of course, television coverage will be largely focused on the pomp, the parade, and the crown jewels. But up and down the country, less old-fashioned, more digital means of marking the coronation have emerged.

Trevor Jones’ Coronation NFT on Nifty Gateway

To commemorate the occasion, the Evening Standard, a free newspaper read by millions of Londoners each day, has collaborated with artist Trevor Jones. 

The result — an open edition NFT known as The Oath — is available for free on the NFT platform Nifty Gateway until midnight on Sunday.

A digitized and animated version of a painting Jones made, The Oath depicts St Edward’s Crown, a 2.2 KG solid gold crown used in every coronation since Charles II in 1661.

NFT Art Captivates UK

In comments published by the paper, Jones said: “I wanted this particular piece to be for the people and anyone anywhere can mint one of these NFTs for free.”

An early adopter of NFTs, Jones has garnered a reputation for transforming works in traditional media into digitized tokens. 

Through pieces like The Bitcoin Angel, the Scottish artist has become one of the most successful creators on Nifty Gateway. Prior to The Oath, he had already released 8 NFT collections on the platform.

As well as the open edition listed on Nifty Gateway, the piece is being shown across large screens on London’s Oxford Street. It will remain on display there until Sunday.

In an Evening Standard podcast, Jones said: 

“It’s a very unique thing for me to do. I’ve done very well in the space and to create an artwork for such a historical event, to work with the Evening Standard, and then to be able to give this artwork to anyone in the world who wants to have it. They can keep it, they can sell it, they can give it to a friend they can do whatever they want with it.”

He is also one of just a handful of artists operating at the intersection of traditional art and the NFT movement.

Last week, the iconic London-based auction house Sotheby’s announced the expansion of its own NFT and Metaverse platform, enabling on-chain peer-to-peer secondary trading. This will allow artists like Jones to continue earning royalties after the initial sale of an NFT 

AI Helps Developer Create Coronation Game in 24 Hours

Beyond Jones’ coronation NFT, there are plenty of other ways the UK has been commemorating this weekend digitally.

On Saturday morning, the Lancashire Telegraph reported that a tech company created an online coronation game. What’s so impressive about that? the firm claims it did so in just 24 hours using Artificial Intelligence.

The report states that Burnley-based +24 used a range of AI tools including ChatGPT to create the new computer game.

King Charles Dash is a free browser game that sees players navigate King Charles’ carriage through the streets of London. Within just a few hours of its release on Friday, thousands of people had already played, the report states.

“The Coronation is the biggest event in the world this weekend. So obviously that was one of the prompts we went with, and the results speak for themselves,” the company’s founder Dave Walker told reporters.

The team of developers used AI to build all aspects of the game. This includes the soundtrack and some of the animation.

“I would say upwards of 80 percent of the game was made with AI,” Walker commented. He added that “We’re going to write up a white paper on how we used AI to build the game.”