Stephanie Arnett/MITTR | Reijksmuseum, Envato
A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models….Continue reading….
By: Melissa Heikkilä
Source: MIT Technology Review
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Critics:
Many thieves are motivated by the fact that valuable art pieces are worth millions of dollars and weigh only a few kilograms at most. Also, while most high-profile museums have extremely tight security, many places with multimillion-dollar art collections have disproportionately poor security measures. That makes them susceptible to thefts that are slightly more complicated than a typical smash-and-grab, but offer a huge potential payoff.
Thieves sometimes target works based on their own familiarity with the artist, rather than the artist’s reputation in the art world or the theoretical value of the work. Unfortunately for the thieves, it is extremely difficult to sell the most famous and valuable works without getting caught, because any interested buyer will almost certainly know the work is stolen and advertising it risks someone contacting the authorities.
It is also difficult for the buyer to display the work to visitors without it being recognized as stolen, thus defeating much of the point of owning the art. Many famous works have instead been held for ransom from the legitimate owner or even returned without ransom, due to the lack of black-market customers. Returning for ransom also risks a sting operation.
For those with substantial collections, such as the Marquess of Cholmondeley at Houghton Hall, the risk of theft is neither negligible nor negotiable. Jean-Baptiste Oudry‘s White Duck was stolen from the Cholmondeley collection at Houghton Hall in 1990. The canvas is still missing.
Museums can take numerous measures to prevent the theft of artworks include having enough guides or guards to watch displayed items, avoiding situations where security-camera sightlines are blocked, and fastening paintings to walls with hanging wires that are not too thin and with locks.
The Smithsonian Institution sponsors the National Conference on Cultural Property Protection, held annually in Washington, D. C. The conference is aimed at professionals in the field of cultural property protection. 2007 saw the foundation of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA). ARCA is a nonprofit think tank dedicated principally to raising the profile of art crime (art forgery and vandalism, as well as theft) as an academic subject.
Since 2009, ARCA has offered an unaccredited postgraduate certificate program dedicated to this field of study. The Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection is held from June to August every year in Italy. A few American universities, including New York University, also offer courses on art theft.
In the public sphere, Interpol, the FBI Art Crime Team, London’s Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit, New York Police Department’s special frauds squad and a number of other law enforcement agencies worldwide maintain “squads” dedicated to investigating thefts of this nature and recovering stolen works of art.
- IFAR
- Commission for Looted Art in Europe
- Holocaust Claims Conference
- Art Loss Register
- Art Recovery Group
In January 2017, Spain’s Interior Ministry announced that police from 18 European countries, with the support of Interpol, Europol, and Unesco, had arrested 75 people involved in an international network of art traffickers. The pan-European operation had begun in October 2016 and led to the recovery of about 3,500 stolen items including archaeological artifacts and other artwork. The ministry did not provide an inventory of recovered items or the locations of the arrests.
In 1969 the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism formed the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (TPC), better known as the Carabinieri Art Squad. In 1980, the TPC established the database Leonardo, with information about more than 1 million stolen artworks, and accessible to law enforcement agencies around the world.
In December 2021 Michael Steinhardt, an American hedge-fund billionaire, was ordered to surrender 180 looted and illegally smuggled antiquities valued at 70 million U.S. dollars. The antiquities will be returned to their rightful owners and Mr. Steinhardt is banned for life from acquiring any other relics.
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