A fascinating story about the founder of the Art Legacy Institute and former FBI Art Crime Team undercover agent, Ronnie Walker. Alitheon was selected by Ronnie and his team for protecting art.
From the story: Forgeries come in two guises: either a known work is replicated, or a new composition is created in the artist’s style and positioned as a previously undocumented work. According to Walker, the solution — to the latter, at least — is surprisingly simple: cataloging. ALI is creating a detailed digital archive, stored on its server, that he hopes would become the definitive record of an artist’s output.
“Documenting what you create, as an artist, is the most important thing you can do… There’s been no shortage of artists who grind away for (decades) to finally get recognized for their contribution, for demand to increase, and then all of a sudden, the fraudsters come out,” he said. “They start attacking the style the artists were doing 20 or 30 years earlier that is not well documented — and it’s those gaps (in provenance) that allow the fraudsters to thrive.”
As for identifying like-for-like replicas? That’s where technology now comes in. Last month, Walker’s organization announced a partnership with optical AI firm Alitheon that can create a unique “digital fingerprint” for any artwork — thousands of data points recording minuscule surface details, invisible to even the greatest forger’s eye.
“It is simple to use and scalable, and it just works,” Walker said, joking: “Even an old, retired FBI agent can use this tech.”