As the applications for AI continue to expand, police are now using it to help track down stolen art and antiquities. The effort has already been so successful that the authorities have identified $200 million worth of valuables that had formerly been lost to illegal activities.
A Portrait of Saint Agnese Stolen 20 Years Ago Was Found
In 2023, an Italian art crime division called the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage started using an AI platform called the Stolen Works of Art Detection System (SWOADS) to identify objects and art that had been stolen.
The platform was put to use during Mercanteinfiera, a 40-year-old antiques fair that took place in Parma, Italy, in October 2024, and involved police officers wandering the event while taking photos of the art that was on display.
“The images were uploaded to an internal database as the officers smiled at the vendors and wandered amid fist-sized bronze statuettes, patinated goblets, yellowing globes, and an endless assortment of oil paintings,” according to the BBC. “Just a couple of hours later, though, the police system flagged one of the snapshots with an alert signal: a painting of a young, fair-skinned woman wearing aquamarine and red, holding up a half-unravelled parchment scroll.”
The piece was found to be a 3.3-foot 17th-Century portrait of Saint Agnese that “had been looted from the small church of Virgo Potens in Sulmona, near Naples, over 500km (310 miles) from the Parma art fair, on the night of 11 August 2004,” the BBC noted.
Featuring a delicate representation of the saint in a white garment and blue dress with jeweled embellishments around the collar, the image also sees the figure draped in a red robe and with cheeks that have a slightly rosy flush as she looks down. The original composition “had apparently then been painted over to appear less recognisable – the lamb now the scroll, and the halo and the palm branch erased to turn the Saint into a young pagan woman instead,” per the BBC.
After police identified the painting at the fair, it was seized the following day and returned to the church near L’Aquila where it was stolen 20 years earlier, ARTnews reported.
Although ARTnews notes that those who stole the painting in 2004 haven’t been apprehended, the recovery of the piece makes it one of a growing number of leads created thanks to the platform.
Police Have Recovered Over 165,000 Objects With AI
“There has been an exponential increase in the number of hits,” said Lt Col Salvatore Rapicavoli, the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Italy IT engineer who developed SWOADS, the BBC mentions.
Indeed, “[s]ince its introduction in November 2023, the AI system has helped his team recover more than 300 large plundered paintings and statues,” the BBC explains. On top of that, it has aided in tracking down “more than 165,000 smaller coins, medals, letters, manuscripts, religious objects, stamps and cards worth more than a total of €203m (£170m, $226m).”
Police Use AI to Identify Painting Stolen from a Church 20 Years Ago