---
title: "A New AI Can Spot Art Forgeries"
description: "A couple from Massachusetts found a way to train a neural network to tell apart real oil paintings from Dutch painter Rembrandt from imitations. "
date: "2019-04-25"
modified: "2019-04-25"
authors:
  - name: "Victor Tangermann"
    job_title: "Senior Editor"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/real-fake-paintings-ai"
categories:
  - "Art"
  - "Artificial Intelligence"
  - "Future Society"
tags:
  - "art"
  - "artificial intelligence"
  - "neural network"
  - "the digest"
---

# A New AI Can Spot Art Forgeries

![A couple from Massachusetts found a way to train a neural network to tell apart real oil paintings from Dutch painter Rembrandt from imitations. ](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/real-fake-paintings-ai.png>)
*\<em\>Image: Google Cultural Institute/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Rembrandt Rip-Off

A couple from Massachusetts has trained a neural network to spot the difference between real oil paintings by 17th century Dutch painter Rembrandt and clever imitations.

As [*IEEE Spectrum* reports](<https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/the-rembrandt-school-of-ai-an-algorithm-that-detects-art-forgery>), many of the 611 paintings attributed to Rembrandt are thought to be [imitations, copies and forgeries](<https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/experts-puzzle-over-which-paintings-are-real-rembrandts/>). The idea is that this new AI could potentially help separate the authentic ones from the fakes.

## Neural Artwork

The couple trained a "convolutional neural network," which is an AI commonly used in image recognition algorithms, by showing it hundreds of works by Rembrandt and known fakes. Rather than feeding it complete scans of entire paintings — massive files in the gigabyte range that could take forever to process — they split them into much smaller tiles, 13,000 of them in total.

And the results of an initial test are promising: the neural network differentiated fake from real paintings with a 90.4 percent success rate.

But it still takes a zoomed-out view for the AI to do an effective job.

"If you really want to see what differentiates Rembrandt, you have to look at a bigger piece of the canvas and at a larger compositional level," Steven Frank, who built the AI with his wife Andrea Frank, told *IEEE Spectrum*.

**READ MORE:** [Amateurs’ Al Tells Real Rembrandts From Fakes](<https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/the-rembrandt-school-of-ai-an-algorithm-that-detects-art-forgery>) \[*IEEE Spectrum*\]

**More on AI and art:** *[This Algorithm Can Create 3D Animations From A Single Still Image](<https://futurism.com/algorithm-3d-animations-still-image>)*

## Author
I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/vtanger.bsky.social>)