Paint by numbers: art experts split over use of AI to judge if works are genuine

Staring enigmatically at an unseen object to her right, the black-haired woman bears a striking resemblance to the person depicted in Pierre Auguste Renoir ’s painting Gabrielle , which Sotheby’s recently valued at between £100 ,000 and £150,000.

But art connoisseurs disagree over whether the work, which is owned by a private Swiss collector, is the real deal. Now, artificial intelligence has waded in to help settle the dispute, and the computer has deemed that it probably is a genuine Renoir .

AI is increasingly being used to help adjudicate on whether valuable artworks are real or fake. Earlier this month, Art Recognition , a Swiss company that developed the technology, said Switzerland’s only Titian – a work entitled Evening Landscape with Couple , held by Kunsthaus Zürich – was probably not painted by the 16th-century Venetian artist.

Yet connoisseurs have warned AI is only as good as the paintings it is trained on. If they are fake, or contain areas that have been touched up, it could create even more uncertainty.

Art Recognition was approached about Portrait de femme (Gabrielle) after the Wildenstein Plattner Institute – one of two institutes that publishes a Renoir catalogue raisonné, a comprehensive list of all known artworks by Renoir – refused to include the painting in its listing.