The algorithm believes that the authorship of the artist can be confirmed by 80%.
Swiss company Art Recognition used artificial intelligence to verify the authenticity of the painting “Portrait of a Woman (Gabrielle)” by Auguste Renoir. Recently, Sotheby's auction house estimated its value between 100-150 thousand pounds ($118-178 thousand), The Guardian reports.
There is no agreement among art experts about the authenticity of the canvas, which belonged to a private collector from Switzerland. Artificial intelligence helped resolve the dispute, which came to the conclusion that the painting was most likely painted by Renoir.
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AI is increasingly being used to authenticate works of art. So, earlier this month, Art Recognition used an algorithm to show that Titian's Evening Landscape with a Couple was unlikely to have been painted by the Venetian artist.
But art connoisseurs warn that the technology has its drawbacks. AI's ability to determine the authenticity of paintings largely depends on the canvases it was trained on. If they are fake or contain areas that have been tinted, this can create even more uncertainty.
Art Recognition decided to investigate the authenticity of Renoir's painting after the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, one of two institutions that publish a comprehensive list of all the artist's paintings, refused to include it in its list.
The company used reproductions of 206 paintings by the French impressionist. , to teach the algorithm to distinguish his style, expressed by broken strokes and bold combinations of colors. The image was divided into fragments that “showed” the AI, and it was also trained on examples of paintings by artists with a similar style who worked around the same time as Renoir.
As a result, the AI concluded that “Portrait women (Gabriel)” was written by Renoir.
Karina Popovichi, CEO of Art Recognition, believes that this opportunity to assess authenticity with a precisely known margin of uncertainty is very important. According to her, art critics often say that they rely on feeling or intuition to determine the authenticity of paintings, which may not be very pleasant for collectors. Bernheim-Jeune, which publishes its own catalog of Renoir's works. After asking for a scientific analysis of the pigments in the painting, they came to the conclusion that it is a real Renoir.
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Previously, enthusiasts have used AI to “expand” known works of art by painting new details . For example, Da Vinci's “Mona Lisa” was knee-deep in the waters of a dark river, Jan Vermeer's “Girl with a Pearl Earring” was in front of a mirror, “Christ Pantocrator” is surrounded by trees in the fog, and above the skulls from “Apotheosis of War” by Vereshchagin, executed in in blue-yellow tones, an ominous cloud hung over.
