People are using Google Gemini to guess the origins of old artwork

In short: More people are uploading photos of old paintings and personal items to Google Gemini to get guesses about what they are, but the tool can confidently give wrong answers.

What's going on

A recent, widely shared story describes a man who uploaded a photo of a painting his mother bought cheaply decades ago. He used Google Gemini’s image features to ask where it might have come from. Gemini offered several possibilities about the painting’s background, also called provenance (the ownership and origin history), but some of the suggestions were speculative and partly incorrect.

This kind of use is becoming common online. On TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms, people share videos of themselves asking Gemini to describe objects in a photo, estimate an era, or suggest what style something looks like. Some also use it to create made-up stories about old family photos, like asking it to invent “memories” (similar to a caption writer that also imagines details).

Google has also been promoting Gemini as a visual helper for everyday life, including in a major ad where a parent uses it to picture a new home. At the same time, Google warns that Gemini can “hallucinate,” meaning it can make up details and present them as facts, especially for niche topics like lesser-known art.

What to watch

For regular people, Gemini can be a useful starting point, like a friend who has seen a lot of pictures but is not an expert. If it suggests a specific artist or a detailed backstory, those claims should be checked using real-world clues like signatures and labels, plus independent sources such as museum sites, public auction records, or a professional appraiser.

Source: NYTimes