Business School Professors Launch AI Tool to Help Identify Unclaimed Nazi-Era Looted Artworks
Researchers at Santa Clara University—management professor Michael Santoro and analytics professors Haibing Lu and Michele Samorani—launched an AI chatbot called AI Provenance Research to help identify Nazi-era looted artworks. The tool draws on an illustrated online database with more than 40,000 entries, initially focusing on the Jeu de Paume database documenting objects taken from Jews in German-occupied France and Belgium between 1940 and 1944 (records online since 2010). Santoro said the project was inspired by his friend Timothy Reif’s effort to recover family artworks; Reif has recovered 11 works by Egon Schiele. At press time, ARTnews found the assistant glitchy, sometimes returning errors or poorly formatted and nonsensical results, and the team aims to refine it and expand to additional datasets.
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This story was covered in Museums Under Scrutiny, AI Hunts Hidden Loot