US-based nonprofit Art Legacy Institute (ALI) has partnered with anti-counterfeiting technology firm Alitheon to help protect art against theft, fraud, and misattribution.
ALI was founded by ex-FBI art crime agent Ronnie Walker last year with a mission to eliminate fakes and forgeries from the art market. Later this year, it will adopt Alitheon’s patented “FeaturePrint” technology—which is already being used to identify car and aerospace parts, precious metals, and watches, among other things—to track the provenance of artworks.
Alitheon’s tech uses “advanced machine vision algorithms” to convert various minute details of a physical item into a unique digital “fingerprint”—or a binary code—that can later be used to “irrefutably identify” that item. Roei Ganzarski, Alitheon’s CEO, told ARTnews all that’s required is one photo of an artwork taken with a smartphone camera “from about five inches away.” This simple usability, he said, sets Alitheon apart from other provenance tracking tech companies.
“I can’t tell you how the algorithms work exactly but if our tech is looking at a part of a canvas of an oil painting, for example, it will identify two things: the aspects that look ‘normal,’ like print font and straight lines, and the aspects that look ‘non-normal,’ like the tiny nuances of the manufacturing process invisible to the naked eye,” he said. “The algorithms disregard the normal aspects of an image but use the ‘non-normal’ aspects to take 5,000 unique points, which have a unique combination and become the digital ‘fingerprint,’ which is in the form of a binary code.”
The “fingerprints” are then stored in the cloud. A photo of an artwork taken with Alitheon’s app and instantly converted into a code can then be used to check against those in the database for a match.
Ganzarski said the likelihood of being able to fraudulently reproduce an identical code is one in three-and-a-half-trillion. He claimed there’s no need to store the binary codes on a decentralized database, like the highly secure blockchain, because they have no “reverse engineer capability.”
“There’s nothing to manipulate in the data,” he told ARTnews. “Since all we have are binaries, literal binary files of things that are not graphical by nature, I could give them to you—and you wouldn’t be able to do anything with them. There’s no need for the blockchain.”
ALI’s stated mission is “to make available the knowledge and tools essential to document, preserve, protect, and promote artists’ creative contributions, thereby ensuring their impact endures for generations to come.”
Walker, who spent 20 years in the FBI’s Art Crime unit before retiring in 2024, told ARTnews that he helped recover 20,000 artworks worth around $1 billion during his law enforcement career. After “chasing down fraudsters and art thieves,” he said he became “passionate about finding a way to bulletproof artistic legacy.”
“First and foremost, the ALI’s partnership with Alitheon is in service of artists, but ultimately, it will be a valuable tool for auction houses, galleries, collectors, the entire ecosystem of the art world will find this useful, but it starts with the artist,” he said. “The barrier to entry for art fraud has significantly decreased, thanks to accessible printing technologies capable of producing nearly identical replicas of artwork, even mimicking brushstrokes,” he said.
Walker said global art fraud costs an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion each year. “The global art market has been searching for innovative solutions to stop art fraud in its tracks,” he added. “Using ‘FeaturePrint’ eliminates the need for additive markers, while addressing conservation concerns, maintaining the artist’s original vision for the artwork, and enabling straightforward and scalable implementation.”
Ganzarski, Alitheon’s CEO, said the partnership marks the first time there’s been a “clear way to definitively, simply, and objectively protect artists’ work and reputation.”
“ALI’s founding team has unmatched experience and expertise in the world of art fraud,” he said. “We are excited and proud to be working with them to solve this growing global problem and provide value to the artists.”
There are several tech companies operating in the provenance tracking space, including the UK-based Artclear. Launched in 2020 and entirely funded by angel investors, it developed a patented scanner in partnership with printing giant Hewlett-Packard that captures microscopic images of paintings to similarly create digital “fingerprints.” These are then used to provide “unbreakable and tamperproof” certificates of authenticity stored on the blockchain.
Other companies in the space include Fairchain and Arcual. Both rely on blockchain certificates to ensure authenticity, rather than AI analysis or digital fingerprinting.
