Have a damaged painting? Restore it in just hours with an AI-generated 'mask'

AI-Based Method Restores Priceless Renaissance Art in Under 4 Hours Rather Than Months

A digital mask restores a 15th-century painting in just hours — not centuries.

Graduate Student Develops an A.I.-Based Approach to Restore Time-Damaged Artwork to Its Former Glory

The method could help bring countless old paintings, currently stored in the back rooms of galleries with limited conservation budgets, to light

AI-driven approach restores damaged paintings in just hours

Researcher turns art restoration hobby into new method to repair damaged paintings faster and more cheaply than conventional approaches.

Have a damaged painting? Restore it in just hours with an AI-generated 'mask'

Art restoration takes steady hands and a discerning eye. For centuries, conservators have restored paintings by identifying areas needing repair, then mixing an exact shade to fill in one area at a time. Often, a painting can have thousands of tiny regions requiring individual attention. Restoring a single painting can take anywhere from a few weeks to over a decade.

Physical restoration of a painting with a digitally constructed mask

Conservation of damaged oil paintings requires manual inpainting of losses1,2, leading to months-long treatments of considerable expense; 70% of paintings in institutional collections are locked away from public view, in part because of treatment cost3,4. Recent advancements in digital image reconstruction have helped to envision treatment results, although without any direct means of achieving them5–8. Here I describe the physically applied dig…