Computer Program Can Tell a Dali from a Dud

November 16, 2007

All those purported Dalis (and Leonardos, Rembrandts, van Goghs, and Pollocks) may soon face special scrutiny. Math-based software recently developed by computer scientists at the University of Haifa can apparently distinguish genuine works of art from fakes.

According to researcher Daniel Keren, the new program is able to recognize the styles of artists because it renders their drawings and scenes of nature, people, flowers, and other subjects into specific series of mathematical symbols, sines and cosines. There's a one-to-one correspondence between an artist and the symbols representing his or her art.

"As soon as the computer learns to recognize the clock drawings of Dali," Keren said, "it will recognize his other paintings, even without clocks. As soon as the computer learns to recognize the swirls of van Gogh, it will recognize them in pictures it has never seen before."

The new development represents a small step forward in the field of computer vision. Although computers can't yet easily identify human faces or tell how many faces are in a picture, Keren said, they "are very good at simulating and sketching 3-dimensional images like the arteries in the brain or a road network."

At present, the new program can be helpful to someone who appreciates art, but not to a real expert in the field. If you were a novice who paid a hefty price for a picture that the seller claimed is a genuine Leonardo, the program could tell you if you wasted your money or made a smart purchase.

Source: University of Haifa, Nov. 5, 2007.