Italian Police AI Recovers $200 Million In Stolen Art And Antiquities

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Italian authorities have recovered over $200 million worth of stolen artworks and antiquities, thanks to an artificial intelligence algorithm. The Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Italy's specialized art crime unit, has been using this AI system to identify purloined items since 2023.

The platform, named SWOADS (Stolen Works of Art Detection System), was developed by Salvatore Rapicavoli, an IT engineer who joined the art crime team in 2023. In October 2024, the system notably identified an oil painting at Mercanteinfiera, a 40-year-old antiques fair in Italy that draws exhibitors from across Europe.

As detailed in a BBC article, Italian officers uploaded photographs from the fair into the SWOADS database. The AI flagged an image of a young woman holding a scroll as a match for a 17th-century painting of Saint Agnese, stolen two decades prior from Virgo Potens, a small church in Sulmona, Abruzzo. While human observers might not have recognized the piece due to modifications, the original artwork had featured a lamb, which was later painted over with a Latin-inscribed scroll. SWOADS, however, was able to discern“hidden visual fingerprints in the works, pairing similarities between shades of colour and rough silhouettes.”

The portrait of Saint Agnese has since been returned to the church, though the thieves remain at large. Rapicavoli's initiative has been highly successful, with SWOADS leading to the recovery of more than 300 large paintings and statues, along with over 165,000 smaller artifacts such as coins, letters, and medals.

Source: ARTnews

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