Software identifies dead people in paintings

It is highly improbable for  computers and artificial intelligence to one day surpass the thought of men – after all, you won’t find a supercomputer declaring that “Humans do not exist,” do you? However, computers are great at number crunching, and when applied in the right way thanks to select intelligent algorithms, they would be able to even identify folks portrayed in 15th century paintings. This is the same software that is employed to look out for terrorists mingling in a crowd. Researchers are hoping that this software, when applied properly, is capable of picking up matches between known figures in select portraits as well as other unknown figures.

Since curiosity kills the cat, and many a proverbial feline has been “slain” in the process, it makes perfect sense for us to laud the ability for software to recognize people in paintings of yore, not to mention the possibility of establishing relationships between important political figures that hail from the past. According to Rudolph, a UC Riverside art historian, “Identifying the subjects of these historical portraits can help us better understand the social history of the work of art.”

Given that art can be interpreted very differently by various masters of the canvas, there should be a notable error rate that needs to be factored in the final matching results.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: software