Computer says there is a 80.58% probability painting is a real Renoir

However, art connoisseurs disagree over whether the work, which is owned by a private Swiss collector, is the real deal. Now, artificial intelligence has waded in to help settle the dispute, and the computer has deemed that it probably is a genuine Renoir.

Yet art connoisseurs have warned that the AI is only as good as the paintings it is trained on. If they are fake, or contain areas that have been touched up, it could create even more uncertainty.

The company used photographic reproductions of 206 authentic paintings by the French impressionist to teach its algorithm about his style, which to human observers is characterised by broken brushstrokes and bold combinations of complementary colours. To increase precision, it also split the images into smaller patches and showed these to the algorithm, as well as training it on a selection of paintings by artists with a similar style who were active at around the same time as Renoir.

Based on this assessment, it concluded there was an 80.58% chance that Portrait de femme (Gabrielle) was painted by Renoir.

Popovici agreed that the quality of the training dataset was vital, and said they went to great lengths to ensure they only use photographs of authentic artworks. So far, they have trained their AI to recognise about 300 artists, including most of the French impressionist and old master painters.