CWRU Entrepreneurship AI Speaker Series: AI and Art History

Case Western Reserve University AI Speaker Series, featuring Andrew Van Horn, D. Keith and Margaret B. Robinson postdoctoral fellow in data science in art for the CWRU departments of Physics and Art History, and Clara Pinchbeck, Doctoral Student in the Department of Art History and Art.

Van Horn and Pinchbeck will lead a roundtable discussion with help from their colleagues Ken Singer, Mike Hinczewski, and Mahamad Mahmoud on their presentation, "Prudent Modeler of All That is Seen: Machine learning and the master’s hand."

"AI in art and art history is a controversial subject," says Van Horn. "The aesthetic and ethical questions raised by generative AI 'artists' are ubiquitous, of course, but increased use of AI in art historical analyses has led to questions about its accuracy (among other things)."

"We're using AI to attribute areas of a painting to members of a master's workshop (specifically El Greco). Our work is unique because of the kind of data we use and the AI method we apply. However, we also have a unique mix of quantitative and qualitative minds working together on this project. For us, the modern techniques and classical art historical analyses can, and should, go hand-in-hand."