AI Study Suggests a London Gallery's Been Exhibiting a Fake For Years (thenextweb.com) 121
Thomas Macaulay writes via The Next Web: Samson and Delilah is among the most famous works by Peter Paul Rubens, one of the most influential artists of the 17th century. The painting depicts an Old Testament story in which the warrior Samson is betrayed by his lover Delilah. When London's National Gallery bought the masterpiece in 1980, it became the third most expensive artwork (PDF) ever purchased at auction. But the buyers may now be searching for their receipt. According to a new AI analysis, their prized possession is almost certainly a fake.
The tests were conducted by Art Recognition, a Swiss company that uses algorithms to authenticate artworks. The firm's tool is based on a deep convolutional neuronal network. The system learns to identify an artist's characteristics by training the algorithm on images of their real works. The training dataset is then augmented by splitting the images into smaller patches, which are zoomed into to capture the finer details. Once the training is complete, the algorithm is fed a new image to assess. It then analyzes the picture's features to evaluate the likelihood of it being genuine. After comparing Samson and Delilah with 148 genuine Rubens paintings, the system gave the artwork a 91% probability of being inauthentic. Carina Popovici, the cofounder of Art Recognition, was shocked by the results: "We repeated the experiments to be really sure that we were not making a mistake, and the result was always the same. Every patch, every single square, came out as fake, with more than 90% probability."
The tests were conducted by Art Recognition, a Swiss company that uses algorithms to authenticate artworks. The firm's tool is based on a deep convolutional neuronal network. The system learns to identify an artist's characteristics by training the algorithm on images of their real works. The training dataset is then augmented by splitting the images into smaller patches, which are zoomed into to capture the finer details. Once the training is complete, the algorithm is fed a new image to assess. It then analyzes the picture's features to evaluate the likelihood of it being genuine. After comparing Samson and Delilah with 148 genuine Rubens paintings, the system gave the artwork a 91% probability of being inauthentic. Carina Popovici, the cofounder of Art Recognition, was shocked by the results: "We repeated the experiments to be really sure that we were not making a mistake, and the result was always the same. Every patch, every single square, came out as fake, with more than 90% probability."
Training (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly many people genuinely believed the painting hanging in the museum is authentic and it's likely the museum and the auction house would both have had art experts on hand especially with so much money at stake, so who's to say that the other 148 works used for training are authentic?
Re:Training (Score:5, Informative)
Many experts also believed that the Samson & Delilah painting hanging in the museum was fake. It is a paintings of disputed origin, that astonishingly resurfaced in the early 1900s, with the ones who bought it most vociferously defending it as authentic.
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So? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe this was the painters masterpiece, his magnum opus as it were. It might be radically different than the rest. I mean look at Metallica all their albums since And Justice For All have been crap. Any AI would proclaim them fake.
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the original was painted in 1608-1609. That's about 1/4th through Rubens' career. It was not considered his "magnum opus" in any way at the time and we do have an engraving of the original and a painting of the room the original was hanging in at the time that indicate the original depicted Sampson's feet, which are cropped in this probable forgery.
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Maybe this was the painters masterpiece, his magnum opus as it were. It might be radically different than the rest. I mean look at Metallica all their albums since And Justice For All have been crap.
There haven't been any albums since AJFA have there? Metallica only made four albums and then disbanded.
Unless you're talking about that covers band Tinfoilica, heard they were crap.
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They disbanded, but then formed an IP holding company in order to sue anyone and everyone that listened to their music from then on.
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Training AI on all their albums since And Justice For All would result in the earlier stuff being deemed as fake. Maybe the crap albums are the real Metallica?
Re: So? (Score:2)
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It's true that people can produce works that are radically different from one another, but even in such cases the minute details are likely to have deep similarities. Hence even when people fake their handwriting, small characteristics are likely to remain from their natural handwriting. Since our muscles are accustomed to moving in particular patterns, our works exhibit such patterns in varied combinations, so that a peculiar style comes through even despite conscious efforts to cover it up. Since this AI
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Handwriting analysis (graphology) is generally considered a pseudoscience or scientifically questionable practice. Researchers have found that experts are marginally better than novices at estimating how often specific handwriting features occur in the writing of the general population, but they are not able to do so with complete accuracy.
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Her psychology course required a module in Statistics - to the utter horror of many of the students who di
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I should get back into practice in writing with my other hand. Some years ago I taught myself to write adequately with the other hand to the one I first learned to write with. I also, for completeness, learned to write in the other 6 possible directions (viz : both hands, right to left and left to right, upside down and down-side-down).
Studying crystallography does things like that to yo
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You're being moderated as Funny, but you make a really good point. Spot on about Metallica. I have been listening to their self-titled "black" album a lot lately as well as to AJFA and you would definitely not think that was the same band! I'd moderate you Insightful, but this needed a comment.
Re: So? (Score:2)
From the National Gallery page "During a visit to Italy, Rubens had seen Caravaggioâ(TM)s experiments in the use of highly contrasting light and shade, and deep, rich colour. On his return, he used these new techniques to paint Samson and Delilah" https://www.nationalgallery.or... [nationalgallery.org.uk]
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I thought artists sprang, fully formed, from the forehead of their mentors after being struck by an axe. After that, no development or change, ever.
Artists learning from each other? Who'da thunk it?
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny part of using AI to determine authenticity is that the neural network claims it is fake, but you don't know why. Can you debug this program, to make sure it was not a mistake? Or is it just: "the coefficients say so, do not touch my coefficients!"?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
While there is an active research field into explainable AI, most systems today essentially are what you describe above, yes.
Even if we get into explanations and dig into the machines, the fact that they essentially gain their data by training and large data sets means that their understanding of things is much closer to our intuitive understanding of the world. Like when you see a dog you know that it's a dog - but if I pressed you to explain why, exactly, you think that's a dog, you would actually make up an explanation that has little or nothing to do with how the intuitive part of your brain actually performed its object recognition. There's been a lot of science into these things for decades now. It's really interesting.
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I'm always surprised with what passes as a dog nowdays. A lot of people's pets out there mess up my brain's object recognition function. But hey, as long as they can hump each other and produce fertile offspring they're all dogs, I guess. Maybe I'm just hard to convince.
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They can't all hump each other and produce offspring, consider size, a Saint Bernard and Chihuahua for example. Meanwhile a dog and coyote or wolf can hump each other and produce fertile offspring. Species is a fluid concept
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If you ever read 'On the Origin of Species' you'll find that Darwin came to much the same conclusion, that the definition of species will vary depending on the aspects being examined. Most people are taught in grade school that if animals are mutually fertile and can have fertile offspring then they're the same species, mostly because teachers don't have time to teach the nuances. Someone here one time said, "Ask 5 biologists what constitutes a species and you'll get 7 different definitions."
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As few as that? That's a remarkably consistent group of biologists. Are some of them clones of each other, raised as identical twins in identical environments?
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"Species: A group of closely related organisms that are very similar to each other and are usually capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring." Different sources alternate the order of this definition, versus the definition based on characteristics. Apparently the split of Dogs and Wolves as different species is controversial for this reason.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
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Descriptive distance (Score:3)
Like when you see a dog you know that it's a dog - but if I pressed you to explain why, exactly, you think that's a dog,
The brain has internal models of its beliefs, and places everything in a sort of multidimensional space where "description" acts as a sort of length.
This, when you see an image and are asked "is this a dog or a cat", the response is usually "it looks closer to a dog". That word "closer" is a hint to how the brain processes recognition: it has models of both "cat" and "dog", and notes that the differences between the image and its model of "dog" are smaller than the differences between the image and its mode
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While there is an active research field into explainable AI, most systems today essentially are what you describe above, yes.
Even if we get into explanations and dig into the machines, the fact that they essentially gain their data by training and large data sets means that their understanding of things is much closer to our intuitive understanding of the world. Like when you see a dog you know that it's a dog - but if I pressed you to explain why, exactly, you think that's a dog, you would actually make up an explanation that has little or nothing to do with how the intuitive part of your brain actually performed its object recognition. There's been a lot of science into these things for decades now. It's really interesting.
True, though if I disagree with your classification of something as a dog we can start discussion our explanations and refining our classifications. For instance, is it because of the shape of the snout? Perhaps I know another non-dog animal with a similar looking snout. Perhaps you noticed a bowl labelled 'Fido' or an owner that seems to be a stereotypical 'dog person'. Our initial assessment may be just as vaguely reasoned as the AI, but humans are able to iterate through these counterfactuals in the way
Re: Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention, the use of phrases like "deep convolutional neuronal network" are (or should be, at least) the opposite of convincing.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Maybe they confuse consistency with correctness?They fed the same AI the same reference material and the same painting and got the same results - that's how computers wrk.
Who's got it? (Score:2)
This probably means that someone else has the original. I wonder what they're thinking right now...
Re: Who's got it? (Score:2)
I'm wondering, too.
I have an old copy myself, belonged to my great-great-great-grandfathers cat before 1929. Wondering where the original is.
(Ok, it sounded funnier in my head... :-p)
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I have an old copy myself, belonged to my great-great-great-grandfathers cat before 1929.
My cat's great-great-great-grandfather knew your great-great-great-grandfathers cat and told me it's a liar, makes stuff up all the time.
Re: Who's got it? (Score:2)
Yep, sounds like my family alright. *shrug*
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It probably means the original no longer exists.
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Do you know something I don't? :-)
it has been disputed for decades (Score:5, Informative)
Re:it has been disputed for decades (Score:5, Interesting)
AI is a new tool. I am working on AI with image processing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So, do not say "This must be a fake, because Computers plus Science!'. However, it is very hard to quantify a general hunch that "It sorta doesn't look like most other Rubens stuff", particularly when other experts disagree. But if an AI can reproduce this feeling of a hunch from a scan of any small region, then it isn't just "the arm looks wrong" which may mean something was repositioned late in the process, but something generally wrong with every small bit of it.
The Van Meegren fakes of Vermeer may have had his style, but X-Ray studies showed he used titanium white instead of lead and zinc white, and stuff like that. The AI evidence is much less clear-cut than that. Presumably all the materials are kosher with this one. But there is something rum about it.
Disclaimer: I am not a Rubens fan. The picture is what it is. The real concern is the monster price tag because it is said to be by Rubens.
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The Van Meegren fakes of Vermeer may have had his style, but X-Ray studies showed he used titanium white instead of lead and zinc white, and stuff like that.
That is the kind of scientific evidence I would believe. Apart from anything else, it is basically chemistry, and not image processing.
Image processing algorithms, designed to recognise and distinguish between different shapes, are notoriously unreliable. A face recognition algorithm that can't tell the difference between a black person and a Gorilla does not instil confidence in the technology.
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"...he used titanium white instead of lead and zinc white"
"That is the kind of scientific evidence I would believe."
I believe its been shown that there are 2 different materials used for each white, but could he have possibly been out of titanium white and used an alternative due to supply issues? Even in the 21st century, we can't even seem to have a steady supply of toilet paper or convince 30% of the population to take a vaccine.
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I believe its been shown that there are 2 different materials used for each white, but could he have possibly been out of titanium white and used an alternative due to supply issues?
In a manner of speaking. The point of detecting forgeries by the materials used is the time when each material became usable is known. The original of this painting was painted in 1608. Titanium wasn't chemically isolated until 1791 and titanium dioxide for use in pigments wasn't mass produced until 1916. Titanium white requires knowing the element exists and separating it from its usual ores in a chlorine process which was unknown in the 1600s.
Modern pigments literally didn't exist until modern chemist
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*Trivia Alert*
The Romans also used lead to sweeten cheap wine for consumption by the commoners, since it was cheaper than sugar (an expensive luxury good until the industrialization of the industry in the 18th century). Wine was consumed from childhood to old age, the lead content in some of the corpses is truly astronomical.
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If you include "lack of a time machine" as part of "supply issues", then yes.
Vermeer died in 1675. Titanium white was developed as a pigment in the early years of the 20th century, and requires considerable chemical processing to produce a white pigment from the ores. Most titanium-rich minerals are quite dark in colour (greys, near black, bright bronzy yellow), which would mean they'd be picked out in the p
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So why is the algorithm more authoritative than people?
Is this a trick question? Firstly no one has claimed the algorithm is authoritative. Secondly algorithms do show their working. Think of it as the difference between two scientists debating whether climate change is real, and an actual model showing a link to rising CO2.
AI is just a tool in a toolbox.
Re:it has been disputed for decades (Score:5, Interesting)
So why is the algorithm more authoritative than people?
Haha, good point. For genuine experts the AI can really only be a tool for assisting more qualitative analysis, akin to a polygraph in a criminal investigation. The "91%" implies that there's still a 9% chance that the algorithm is wrong. But that's really only a numerical representation; it's not even fair to say, "If we had 100 such paintings, 9 of them might turn out to be authentic." If 100 such paintings existed, it would outweigh the input data set so much that the same percentage would no longer apply. So it's more like when Windows says it's "91%" done with a file transfer. Amazingly, that last 9% can sometimes take as long as the first 90%. The number is there more as an interpretive tool for the user ("I shouldn't cancel, it's almost done!") than a real, quantitative representation of the progress.
The reason for having an output percentage is because in some way or another the AI must reduce the painting to quantifiable information, and the best way to correlate such quantifiable information back into the overarching qualitative analysis of the work is to use a probability, even one which is more representative (this 91%) than real (e.g. flipping a coin and getting heads will happen about 50% of the time).
Still, your point is very valid precisely because the general public, led by sensational journalism, is likely to think that the AI alone is more definitive than the qualitative analysis of art experts. The flow of authority today is very peculiar. I always try to bring this to the fore when teaching people so they see how society grants authority. There is the "cult of the experts" on the one hand; we are a society that does not readily trust religion or government, but we trust people with letters after their name. Books often highly a physician's name proudly--even if he or she had little to do with the book's contents--because the idea of a physician sells. Even to sell a crackpot scheme or conspiracy theory, one needs "science" to back it up. Thus anti-vaxxers have their own "experts" who promote their anti-scientific views using their own brand of "science." Yes it's often superstitious, but it isn't usually on the authority of visions or revelations that they believe in their views, but rather on the authority of so-called experts.
On the other hand, computers and AI have their own related authority. I received a mailer recently advertising real estate, and it shows an iPhone with glowing reviews on its screen. Having a phone there implies that the business is high-tech and modern, and filling its screen with reviews implies their authenticity. Of course it's just a mailer, but it works because the iPhone symbolizes authority. Many people today are more likely to trust the outrageous advice they discover via their phones than the common sense advice given to them by parents, teachers, priests, or other traditional authority figures.
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the general public, led by sensational journalism, is likely to think that the AI alone is more definitive than the qualitative analysis of art experts
In a case where art experts are split on something, I know that at least the AI won't be swayed by an emotional desire for one answer or the other.
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Or financial interest. Some of the "experts" are seen more as experts in inventing reasons why a work should be considered authentic rather than as actual critics interested in authenticity. Mercenaries of the art world, I suppose.
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There will always be experts. You have to trust what experts tell you, because you don't have the means to find out things for yourself. But when there is a multiplicity of opinions, only some of which are based on knowledge, which expert do you trust? At present, there seems to be a mistrust of "official" experts, and more trust put in way out loony theories. Why is that? Perhaps it is a mistrust of all officialdom. There are plenty of reasons why people should mistrust officials. Politicians are mostly ly
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So why is the algorithm more authoritative than people?
I don't think they consider it authoritative - however they do consider it neutral. Most critics who feel one way or another either have a stake in the matter, or have strong personal feelings on the subject. For example, the pedigree of this painting is a bit shady, and experts know that pedigree, thus it would bias their opinion regardless of the qualities of the painting itself.
This AI analyzes only the physical, factual characteristics of the painting. I presume that things like color choices, brush s
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This raises an interesting point: do people trust a computer algorithm more than human art experts? If so, we are in the shit. There is far too much trust put in "what the computer says". If all the AI was doing was looking for inconsistencies in the style of the painting, compared to Rubens' other works, then all I can say to that is that maybe Rubens was experimenting a bit. Artists do that, you know.
The opacity of the algorithm verdict is also worrying. You can ask a human expert "why do you think this i
It seems it being fake is not news... (Score:5, Informative)
Reading the Guardian article, I don't see how anyone could have been "shocked" by the results, the evidence was pretty damning before. It's a painting that was lost in 1640 and suddenly appeared in 1929, authenticated by someone who was proven to authenticate fakes for money. Its colours and strokes different from other Rubens works (when we know it was painted reasonably early, but definitely not at the start of his career), but most damning, the painting appears on 2 copies that we know are from the original's era and the National Gallery's painting is CROPPED compared to those (one an engraving, the other a painting of the room where the original owner had it hanging).
It seems that the National Gallery made a bad decision purchasing this for millions back in '83 and they have been doubling down on it since just to protect their investment, even though the evidence against it being a Rubens being pretty damning.
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lost in 1640 and suddenly appeared in 1929
Radiocarbon dating should be able to determine the difference between these two dates.
There are ways to spoof radiocarbon dating, but nobody would have used those methods in 1929.
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My quick Google suggests C14 dating only works for samples more than about 300 years old. If that's the case, I doubt if it could provide a conclusive result for this paining and, even if it could, there's no reason why it couldn't date from around 1640 and still be a fake. It could be a copy made in the seventeenth century or it could be a modern forgery painted on seventeenth century canvas.
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That was a nice summary of what I would call proper forensic evidence. I am not sure this AI "evidence" really adds to that.
I do have to ask a question, though. Is the fake actually any good as art?
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I both agree and disagree. Context matters when evaluating the things around us, and who the artist is of a work is responsible for establishing much of that context.
To draw an example from an unrelated field, a lot of my own humor involves a deadpan delivery, but deadpan deliveries require that your audience know you well enough to know that you’re making a joke. In my case, I need my audience to know beforehand that I’m not a complete idiot, that way when I say something out of character, they
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You've just described the entire career of Andy Worhol.
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The amount of artwork reliably ascribed to Neanderthals is ... very small. The did do some "arty" things - portable work sometimes found in burials (with recognisably Neanderthal bones). But the vast majority (if not all) of the stuff found on cave walls dates from after the extinction of Neanderthals and their repl
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Pretty much every time an archaeology story comes up here, someone starts bleating on about how, if they found a bone on a building site in America, they'd run the back hoe (is that the term? "JCB [wikipedia.org]" ) over it a few times before anyone noticed. At which point, it becomes astonishing that America has any archaeology finds. I suppose it's symbolic of the hatred that the powerful in America have for being reminded of their predecessor's genocide and slave-ke
So who painted it (Score:2)
If their database is large enough and the actual author made more paintings that are still around today, their AI should not only be able to tell who probably didn't paint it but also who probably did.
PDF artwork? (Score:2)
"it became the third most expensive artwork (PDF)" - Rubens released his work as PDFs?
It's not unheard of (Score:2)
that "experts" are fooled by fakes... Here's one that I find funny
https://archive.archaeology.or... [archaeology.org]
because even as a kid when I saw the pictures of those statues among the rest of the Etruscan items something was "off".
And what about Piltdown Man?
Is there any conflict of interest here ? (Score:2)
Well, if no one wants it any more ... (Score:2)
I have some empty space on my lounge wall ...
Who cares - or rather should they? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sceptical of the entire art market; the idea that a poor example of a very famous painter's work is worth far more than a solid work by someone less well known is deluded. The same applies in SF material; I made the mistake buying an early Robert Silverberg novel - and was wildly unimpressed. Similarly crawling through the detritus of Asimov's poor material is uninspiring.
So it would be good to see galleries sticking to 'the good stuff' regardless of it origins, rather than fixating on the precise history. Or am I missing something?
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Painting a copy of another painting is relatively easy compared to creating the original. It is already known that there is an original, so if it is a fake it would also be a copy.
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Art is valued more for the story behind it than the quality of the work. That's simple supply and demand, there is lots of good quality art and you can pay to have it created to your exact tastes, but the amount of centuries old art with and interesting history is quite limited.
An adjusted sigmoid is not a probability (Score:2)
Train your f'ing pooling layer (Score:2)
Without knowing the correlation of in authenticity probabilities for known authentic outliers saying something is true for all the patches is meaningless.
Train a fucking pooling layer.
Fake or fortune? (Score:3)
I can't resist this painting:
Knickers [wikipedia.org]
Rubens was of course a genuine artist, and not just taking the piss, like modern artists seem to like doing. Taking the piss might possibly be exemplified by this piece:
Fountain [wikipedia.org]
The trouble, it is now quite an old joke (1917), so I am not sure I would call it modern any more.
Back on topic, there is a point about the intrinsic worth of a work of art, as art, versus its worth as an item in financial speculation. I would suggest that the fake Rubens has passed the intrinsic worth test for many years, but has pissed of the art dealing speculators, and I don't mind that at all.
Re: Fake or fortune? (Score:2)
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Doesn't matter. His earlier work doesn't measure up to Pee Wee Herman anyway.
Peter Paul Rubens Paul Ruben's Peter.
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Doesn't matter. His earlier work doesn't measure up to Pee Wee Herman anyway.
Peter Paul Rubens *(is not equal to) Paul Ruben's Peter.
VERY COMMON (Score:2)
Any significant museum owns a fake or ten.
Sculptures in particular are known to be hard to verify. Paintings are better. Spectrometers can reveal what type of paint was used, radioactive dating can give the age of the organic materials used. Not so for stone. You can go to Italy, find the same quarry that Michelango used, carve up a fake and no one can say for sure.
A good rule of thumb is the more info they have about a sculpture, the more likely it is to be real. I.E. "X bust, done by Mr. Y, on Z da
Maybe a student of Ruben? (Score:2)
I remember learning in my college art history classes that it was common for artists to take on students that would produce paintings using their style and then still take credit for the work.
Make their money back as an NFT (Score:2)
They bought the piece for 2.5 million pounds in 1980.
They can make back ten times that amount selling a scan of the image as an NFT. They'll probably make yet more pointing out it's an original of a scam.
Then it will be art again, instead of just a beautiful painting of great historical value. (/s)
But since there is no source code... (Score:2)
investigators will not be able to tell why the AI flagged it. My point is, neurally-trained AI is basically a black box. With a 3 or 4GL at least you could "psychoanalyze" the source and determine the cause of rejection. Let's hope this kind of AI is never used in capital cases.
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
First Post !
I'm 91% sure it's a fake first post
Re: First Post (Score:2)
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It depends on how the probabilities of the individual squares compose. If each of a hundred sections of the painting were 91% fake with independent probability, it would mean the painting had only an infinitesimal chance of being real. But if the features detected had to do with the backing or the paintbrush type, it wouldn't matter how many sections were tested since all sections would share the same features.
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They're not independent though. They were all painted by the same person.
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Perhaps not. Art forgery, art fraud, and simple error leave chances that some of the original pieces were not in fact by Rubens.
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They were all painted by the same person.
That's not a given. All sorts of art of the period was painted at least in part (e.g. the boring bits of the background) by a student, leaving the master to do the figures, and sometimes not even all the figures. And plus a significant amount of work has been retouched including some significant revisions. Sometimes those revisions were even done by the same artist when a figure fell out of favour and was painted out, but in a later style slightly from the original, although mostly these revisions are detec
Re:So you're saying there's a chance... (Score:5, Funny)
since when does a 91% chance make something "almost certain"?
About nine times out of ten.
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since when does a 91% chance make something "almost certain"?
About nine times out of ten.
91% of the time, it works every time.
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The other guy was funnier
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The figure of 91% is not something I would interpret as a probability.
It might well be. It's probably in the FTA.
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Re: So you're saying there's a chance... (Score:2)
If you participated in nearly two years of weekly lottery drawings (100) and you won the grand prize in 91 of those weeks, you could rightly describe your odds as "highly likely" or that you had a "high probability" of winning the grand prize if there was a 101st lottery drawing.
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That threshold depends on the test, but 5%/95% and 10%/90% are the most common ones.
In "social sciences", yes - that is why they systematically fail to reproduce their results.
High-energy physics requires even lower p-values to announce evidence or discoveries. The threshold for "evidence of a particle," corresponds to p=0.003, and the standard for "discovery" is p=0.0000003.
(Source) [scientificamerican.com]
Re: So you're saying there's a chance... (Score:2)
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Eh, that's how statistical tests work. You make the null hypothesis and the farther away from 50% your result is, the more certain you are the result is not pure chance. 91% is a very strong signal this is fake, you never get results of 100% for something like this, and yet you do use a threshold as the "definite yes/no". That threshold depends on the test, but 5%/95% and 10%/90% are the most common ones.
Only if you want to make a lot of bad decisions. Let us say that 10 in 1010 paintings are forgeries. You run this 90% sure algorithm on them. Then you will find 9 of the 10 forgeries. But you will also determine that 100 paintings to be forgeries that are not forgeries in reality. So 9 out of the 109 paintings you found to be forgeries are in fact forgeries. In other words your p=0.9 value results in a 9/109*100 = 8% probability a given painting that you determined to be a forgery is in fact a forgery.
And t
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It wouldn't cure the problem of people misunderstanding statistics, but it would reduce the number of statistical ignoramuses graduating