In 1945 Nazis burned a warehouse of paintings in Vienna because they didn't want the Russians to get them. Among the lost paintings were Guztav Klimpt's Philosphy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence.
The only record of the paintings are black and white photographs. Researchers used these photos along with written descriptions and the color palettes of Klimpt's other paintings to colorize the three photos. Of course, no one will ever know how the compare to Klimpt's originals (unless there are color photos that no one knows about).
From Google Arts & Culture:
Once the color information was sourced, Emil Wallner, a resident at the Google Arts & Culture Lab, developed an algorithm to use Dr. Smola's research to restore the Faculty Paintings. Instead of manually coloring the paintings, Wallner's algorithm does a statistical analysis of Klimt's existing artworks and learns how to mimic Klimt's colorization style. Based on the data analysis together with Dr. Franz Smola's research, the algorithm reconstructs the Faculty Paintings.
The Washington Post asked a New York gallerist for her opionion of th A.I. restoration:
"I don't know any better than Google what those paintings really look like, but I don't think that they looked like that," says Jane Kallir, longtime director of the Galerie St. Etienne in New York, which gave Klimt his first shows in the United States. "These things look like cartoons. They don't look like Klimt paintings.
"It's like people who try to clone their dogs. You can do it, but it's not the same dog."
So, not a fan.
