Human, Do You Think This Painting is the Work of a Real Artist?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to be applied in the field of art, which had hitherto been an area exclusively reserved for human creativity. Using online AI tools, lay people can easily create artworks that imitate the style of famous artists. Consequently, human judgment on the authenticity of artworks has become critical. While many studies have focused on copyright or value of AI-created artworks, we examine whether human beings can distinguish between paintings drawn by artists and fake paintings created using AI tools. We selected the AI’s recommendations for each artwork and prior information about the artists as factors that can affect human judgment and investigated how the two factors affect people’s discriminative abilities. We found that people have difficulty distinguishing authentic from fake artwork and that additional information about artists and artworks can affect people’s criteria for judging paintings. Furthermore, AI recommendations can help discriminate fake paintings, suggesting that AI-assisted decision-making could play an assistive role in human identification of digitized fake paintings.