An algorithm has identified over 40 artworks falsely attributed to artists, including Monet and Renoir, being sold on eBay.
Art Recognition is a Swiss firm that specializes in identifying fake and counterfeit art. Earlier this week, Dr. Carina Popovici, its CEO and co-founder, said that their AI algorithm had identified up to 40 paintings being sold on eBay that have a high probability of being fake. She said: “The algorithm identified all of them as fakes. We looked today and we downloaded some images, and there were fakes all over the place. Everything that we have analysed turns out to be not real art, a negative probability with 95% or so. I’m sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
One of the flagged works was a painting titled ‘Forest with a Stream‘, attributed to Claude Monet and listed for $599,000. Another work attributed to Pierre-Auguste Renoir was listed for $165,000.
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The eBay website maintains that selling counterfeits is illegal on the platform and the counterfeited works are not allowed to be listed. After the news broke, the company clarified that at least one of the flagged items was already removed. The fake Renoir was also removed by the time eBay released a statement, but the fake Monet was still listed. eBay also explained its efforts to deal with fakes: “We do this by using multiple layers of AI technology, professionally trained eBay investigators and buyer protection programs. eBay proactively blocked 88 million suspected counterfeits from being published in 2022, while removing 1.3 million items from the platform following a review by an eBay investigator.”
