Italian Police Used AI to Identify $200 M. Worth of Stolen Art and Antiquities
ArtsCriminal JusticeHistory
THE AI ANGLE
Matching photographs of altered artworks against stolen artifact recordsItalian police used an AI tool named SWOADS to match market photographs against databases of missing cultural artifacts. The software identified over 200 million dollars in stolen items, including a 17th-century painting that thieves had altered with new paint. Art crime investigators and historians can now trace modified historical pieces that human eyes fail to recognize.
THE TEACHING ANGLE
Students can evaluate how algorithms identify altered stolen artworks that human inspectors miss at commercial markets.Read the original at artnews.com Generate teaching or study materials
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