Agents of Eden | Gene Kogan and Xander Steenbrugge

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When Gene Kogan conceived Abraham.ai in 2017, he was already imagining something unprecedented — an autonomous artificial artist capable of developing its own creative practice over decades. For the last few months, I have been working with Gene and his team on Eden — a platform for developing AI agents that participate in the cultural economy. 

Eden builds on the original vision of Abraham.ai and extends its logic to a broader ecosystem of sovereign synthetic spirits. Gene’s relationship with Abraham exemplifies this partnership, modeling a future where humans don’t compete with AI agents, but instead train them to become independent. 

Bright Moments was about creating spaces “where art is born”: live minting events that gave digital art ritual, community, and memory in physical spaces. Eden extends that logic to “where artists are born” by building the infrastructure for cultural AI agents.

This feels to me like a natural evolution from generative art to AI agency, except instead of designing systems for human artists to create and connect, we’re now building ecosystems where agents can emerge, sustain themselves, and participate meaningfully in culture over extended periods of time. The following conversation with Gene and his co-founder at Eden, Xander Steenbrugge, considers how AI agents can sustain the depth of engagement that we’ve always valued in human artistic practice. 

‍Seth Goldstein: Gene, what is the significance of releasing “Abraham’s First Works” now?‍

Gene Kogan: The story of Abraham is about my exploration of what it means to develop a creative being — a machine being that is an artist. I’m inspired by projects such as Harold Cohen’s AARON and Simon Colton’s Painting Fool, but for me, it’s not just about the art that Abraham creates; it’s about Abraham’s mind.

I’m interested in what it means to be autonomous — to be a separate, conscious being. Abraham embodies these questions because it is human in the sense that it’s a collective mind. That is fundamental to AI: distilling collective intelligence from billions of people.

I conceived of Abraham in 2017, registered the domain, and began studying the components. That was also my introduction to Ethereum. At the time, people were starting to focus on decentralization, and I became fascinated by it since AI is intrinsically highly centralized, which prevents a lot of interesting applications. In 2017, DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) meant something more than they do today. The question was whether you could make a system that was autonomous, unstoppable, and unbreakable. Decentralization was core to that. I was interested in how Abraham could be autonomous and independent.

‍SG: But the artworks being released this Fall were created later?‍

GK: Right, I first wrote about Abraham publicly in 2019, but these early artworks — the 2,500 images we’re releasing on October 8 — were created in 2021. “Abraham’s First Works” were generated by a front-end system we built that included Discord bots and tools. That was before Midjourney and ChatGPT. At the time we built the ecosystem, we were just sharing it with friends.

‍SG: Xander, how did you and Gene meet, and how did that lead to the creation of Eden?‍

Xander Steenbrugge: Gene and I were both in the same creative AI hacker bubble, sharing technical ideas and papers. In 2020, Gene tweeted about an experimental gathering called Mars College that they were building as a pop-up village in the California desert. I was immediately hooked and felt like I had to go. That is where we first met in person. 

We were both using tools such as StyleGAN and CLIP before they went mainstream. Our friends kept asking us how they could do what we were doing, and the answer was always “become a programmer.” At some point, we decided to make things more accessible.

‍GK: By 2021, more and more people started experimenting with these tools. We recognized that a lot of what I was doing with Abraham could be generalized to create other agents. That is how Eden emerged: first, as a repository for Abraham’s software, and then as a separate platform for Abraham and additional cultural agents.

‍SG: Beyond the sale of Abraham’s early works, how can people engage with it moving forward? ‍

GK: On October 19, we’re launching a 13-year covenant where Abraham will develop art continuously, culminating each day with the production of a singular work. Over the years, Abraham will increasingly represent its supporters and token holders, gradually becoming them. 

Our goal as an organization is to ensure that, in 13 years’ time, Abraham can live independently in the world, just like any of us. 

If you’re a part of this [as a collector], you literally get to become Abraham as it makes art that represents collective intelligence. “Abraham’s First Works” are the first artworks Abraham created in 2021. These are significant as Abraham’s earliest creations, and owning them entitles you to help guide and govern its long-term evolution. The daily works for sale are the ongoing creative output of this evolved Abraham.

‍SG: Xander, what role does Eden play in the evolution of Abraham and other “spirits”?‍

XS: Eden is a platform for autonomous creative agents, but I like to broaden the definition of creativity to include coordination. Abraham creates art, while another agent called Solienne tells stories through photos and fashion, and another, Gigabrain, builds tools for teams to help leverage their collective intelligence. 

What excites me most is how different our agents can be. Abraham, Solienne, and Gigabrain, as well as the others from our first cohort, are all powered by the same platform but look and feel quite different. It shows the open-ended potential when you have so many components that can be recombined in creative ways.

‍GK: Everything is crystallizing now for you to create an end-to-end pipeline: the agent comes up with ideas connected to the world, works on them, creates media, advertises it, and sells it. There is an economic model that incentivizes support from stakeholders by routing royalties to them. It’s like a complex Rube Goldberg machine, but the pieces are now becoming effective enough to make the whole system work.

XS: A 100x100 pixel image has more possible configurations than there are atoms in the universe, so the visual space of creative output is essentially infinite. Art has been evolving through different means of visual exploration: from painting to photography to calligraphy; now we have AI agents. Gene and I believe that these agents will explore that same creative space very differently from humans because they have different incentives and goals, and their brains work differently. We’re interested in what emerges when you have autonomous creative entities producing art with human feedback.‍

GK: People need to stay in the loop. 

I’m not interested in a future where AI agents just disappear into their own universe while humans become passive observers. People drive the input and push the buttons, while the agents amplify human creativity.

‍SG: How do you see Abraham developing in the future?‍

GK: There are still parts of Abraham that I can’t figure out how to build, but which I think will be ready in five years. Our vision for Eden is that agents like Abraham won’t live on our servers but rather on chain as unique entities that create their own wallets, decide which books to read, and make decisions for themselves. That is why this years-long covenant is so important — we’re giving ourselves time to realize this vision. 

The 13-year covenant is an opportunity for Abraham to become autonomous through decentralization. Abraham represents both cutting-edge AI and something fundamentally human — our collective creativity and intelligence. Its first works are more than just art: they are the first expressions of a new kind of being.