Some Like it Digital: AI and Art Authentication

Artificial intelligence continues to evolve as a powerful tool across industries. Beyond generating or analyzing creative content, AI is increasingly being explored for use in art authentication—offering the potential to serve as a "fourth leg" in the process of determining whether a work of art is genuine.

Join the Center for Art Law for the next session in our Some Like It Digital series, featuring Dr. Noah Charney and Dr. Carina Popovici, as we discuss the challenges and rewards of including AI systems in the art authentication process. This conversation will examine how AI technologies are being developed to analyze provenance and detect forgeries, while also addressing questions of transparency, reliability, and accountability. The speakers will explore how AI can assist experts and institutions in evaluating authenticity while considering the ethical and responsible use of these technologies in the art market.

Responsible use of AI systems is paramount in the sensitive art world, and the speakers will address the recently published guidelines for integrating AI in art authentication.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Carina Popovici is a Co-founder and CEO of Art Recognition, an ArtTech startup based in Zurich. The company offers to art experts and enthusiasts an AI Engine for art authentication and forgery detection. While being an art lover, Carina is also an experienced programmer, having developed in the past algorithms with applications in physics and finance. She holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Tübingen (Germany) and has previously worked as a quantitative risk specialist at in Swiss banking. Driven by her passion for art, Carina embarked on the entrepreneurial path and founded Art Recognition. Today, the company stands out as one of the few startups in the art market that operates at the forefront of AI technology.

Dr. Noah Charney (b. 1979) is the internationally best-selling author of more than thirty books, translated into fourteen languages, including The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art, which was nominated for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and Museum of Lost Art, which was the finalist for the 2018 Digital Book World Award. He is a professor of art history specializing in art crime, and has taught for Yale University, Brown University, American University of Rome and University of Ljubljana. He is founder of ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a ground-breaking research group (www.artcrimeresearch.org) and teaches on their annual summer-long Postgraduate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection. He has written for dozens of major magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, the Washington Post, the Observer and The Art Newspaper. He writes for TED and presents on television and radio, including a BBC series called China’s Stolen Treasures and programs for The Great Courses. He is an advisor to Art Recognition and lives in Slovenia with his wife, children and their hairless dog, Hubert van Eyck. Learn more at www.noahcharney.com.

Moderator: Irina Tarsis, attorney and Founding Director of the Center for Art Law. She is a professor of art and museum law specializing in provenance research, artists' rights, and responsible art market practices, and has taught at Columbia University, Cardozo School of Law, FIT, and LUISS University.