Fake ‘Monet’ and ‘Renoir’ on eBay Among 40 Supposedly Counterfeit Paintings Identified Using AI

An artwork authentication expert recently said she identified 40 supposedly fake painting being offered for sale on eBay, including two attributed to Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Dr. Carina Popovici, CEO and co-founder of the Swiss firm Art Recognition, told The Guardian earlier this week that she applied “cutting edge artificial intelligence (AI)” technology to photos on the e-commerce platform and found “up to 40” paintings had a high probability of not being authentic.

“The algorithm identified all of them as fakes,” she told The Guardian. “We looked today and we downloaded some images, and there were fakes all over the place. Everything that we have analysed turns out to be not real art, a negative probability with 95% or so. I’m sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

According to The Guardian, the images identified as fakes by Dr. Popovici’s AI tests included one listed as a work by ‘Monet’ titled Forest With a Stream priced at $599,000. Another item described as a study by ‘Renoir’ was priced at $165,000.

eBay’s website states “Counterfeit products are illegal and not allowed” and “We don’t allow counterfeit items or unauthorised copies to be listed.”

In a comment to The Guardian, eBay said it was committed to ensuring items sold on its platform were authentic and noted at least one flagged item had already been removed.

“We do this by using multiple layers of AI technology, professionally trained eBay investigators and buyer protection programs. eBay proactively blocked 88 million suspected counterfeits from being published in 2022, while removing 1.3 million items from the platform following a review by an eBay investigator.”

The Guardian reported that the listing for the Renoir was removed from eBay after a reporter reached out the seller. The eBay listing for the Monet painting was still active on May 9.