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Machines are getting highbrow. One artificial intelligence has learned how to create new styles of art – now another is teaching itself art history.
By analysing thousands of paintings produced over hundreds of years, the AI was able to spot connections between generations of painters that matched accepted theories in the art world. It might even teach us something new. “The machine could be seeing some complex links that we have no idea about,” says Marian Mazzone, an art historian at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.
Paintings are often grouped according to their style: think of the Renaissance marvels of Botticelli and Michelangelo or the abstract expressionist masterpieces of Rothko and Pollock. Describing exactly what constitutes a style is tricky, even for art historians. But one way to do