An innovative approach utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) recently exposed roughly 40 potentially forged artworks on the e-commerce site eBay
These listings falsely claimed to include works by celebrated masters such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Dr. Carina Popovici, leader and one of the founders of Art Recognition, a Swiss company at the forefront of art verification, leveraged the company’s cutting-edge AI tool to sift through eBay’s art listings. This sophisticated AI system scrutinized the images of the artworks and singled them out as very likely to be fakes. Dr. Popovici commented, “Just today we did an assessment and downloaded some pictures, encountering numerous forgeries scattered across the site.”
Combating Art Frauds on eBay
Certain pieces unearthed during this investigation were being offered at staggering prices, such as a supposed Monet titled “Forest With a Stream” for $599,000, and a piece claiming to be a Renoir study, showcased for $165,000. Despite eBay’s stringent rules against selling counterfeit goods, these high-value forgeries were detected on its online platform.
eBay has articulated its resolution to assure the genuineness of products sold, employing its own advanced AI tools, teams of professional investigators, and safety measures for buyers to hinder the sale of fake goods. eBay has reported its preventative efforts, highlighting, “In the year 2022, eBay proactively intercepted and halted 88 million listings suspected to be counterfeits before going live, and additionally removed 1.3 million listings from the site.” Following the investigation, eBay led to the removal of at least one flagged item, and subsequent to queries from The Guardian to the vendor of the “Renoir,” that particular post was also taken down.
Dr. Popovici raised alarms about the widespread issue of counterfeit art online, remarking, “All the pieces we’ve examined are inauthentic, showing nearly a 95% probability of being non-genuine. It’s likely that we’re only seeing the beginning of this problem.”
As of May 9, 2024, the eBay posting for the supposed ‘Monet’ painting was still present. This instance emphasizes the perpetual difficulty in regulating online sales platforms and highlights how AI could emerge as a formidable asset in curbing art forgery.
