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ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing ArtsISSN (Online): 2582-7472
AI-Driven Decision Support for Art Collectors Anjali Sharma 1 1 Assistant
Professor, School of Fine Arts and Design, Noida International University,
Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India 2 Department
of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Vishwakarma Institute of
Technology, Pune, Maharashtra, 411037, India 3 Assistant Professor, School of Fashion Design, AAFT University,
Raipur, Chhattisgarh-492001, India 4 Department of Electrical Engineering, Graphic Era Deemed to be
University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India 5 Assistant Professor, Meenakshi College of Arts and Science,
Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, Tamil Nadu,
600107, India 6 Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Technology, Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering, Nagpur, India
1. INTRODUCTION The art market around the world has become a complicated socio-economic ecosystem in which the artistic value, cultural importance, and economic capital interact. Modern art audiences and collectors, whether individual or institutional clients and galleries, as well as investment funds, have to find their way in an environment characterized by large financial interests, a lack of transparency, subjective judgments, and growing vulnerability to forgery and market crashes. Conventional decision-making of art collection has been dependent on expert judgement, provenance reports and documentation, auction history and intuitive judgement. Expert judgment is always invaluable but inherently limited due to cognitive bias, poor scalability and a lack of access to heterogeneous sources of data. Due to the increasing globalization and digitalization of the art market, there is an increasing demand of systematic and data induced decision support tools and mechanisms that are able to supplement human expertise with data analysis and computational intelligence. Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data analytics provide a potentially radical opportunity to solve deep-seated problems in the field of art valuation, authenticity evaluation, and risk management of investment Siri et al. (2024). The digitization of artworks on a high-resolution level, online databases of auctions, online art platforms and digitized provenance archives have contributed to an unprecedented increase in the amount of data related to art. This data is, however, multimodal with visual data (images of artwork, type of the brushstrokes, textures of materials used), written records (catalogues raisonnnes, provenance histories, expert reports), formal metadata (artist, period, medium, dimensions), and live-market data (sales price, trends, sentiment indicators) Mossavar and Zohuri (2024). The ability to smoothly utilize and interpret such a heterogeneous data is beyond the abilities of manual analysis by itself and therefore the use of AI-based decision support systems becomes more and more topical. The use of AI-based decision support in art collectors is intended to complement the human judgment by delivering objective, consistent, and understandable information based on large and diverse data. The computer vision algorithms allow extracting stylistic, compositional, and material characteristics of the artwork images supporting various tasks like artist identification, style typology, and forgery identification. The machine learning models might process previous sales history and marketing patterns to determine the fair market value, predict price dynamics and measure investment risk Qin et al. (2023). The provenance chains, expert discourse, and institutional relationships can also be modeled through the application of the natural language processing and graph-based techniques that would contribute to the increase of the transparency and trust in the authenticity judgments. These separate AI elements can provide a global perspective of the aesthetical, historical, and financial aspects of an artwork when integrated into a multi-criteria decision support system. However, the use of AI in the field of art collection is not without issues, despite its potential Singh et al. (2023). Art world: The art market is defined by a relative lack of identified data, dynamic artistic production, tactical action of the market participants and subjectivity of the aesthetic value. Additionally, collectors frequently demand predictions, as well as elucidable arguments, which meet curatorial information, morality, and cultural background. Thus, AI-based art decision support cannot be modeled as black box predictors, but transparent, modular and human-friendly tools that will assist in informed and responsible decision-making. This paper presents an AI-based decision support system designed specifically to assist art collectors and combines automated valuation, authenticity, and market predictive features into a single system architecture Kiourexidou and Stamou (2025). The proposed framework is aimed at mitigating information asymmetry, boosting confidence in acquisition decision-making, and promoting long-term collection strategies using the multimodal art data and improved machine learning methods. 2. Related Work Art market decision support research is an area of research that cuts across art economics, cultural analytics, and applied artificial intelligence, and the work published in the field was originally founded on econometric and statistical models. Conventional valuation studies have used hedonic pricing models to determine the value of artwork using visible characteristics like artist reputation, medium, size, and auction house effects. Although such models were easy to understand, they did not easily represent nonlinear relationships, visual aesthetics and fast changing market dynamics. Such statistical methods have been operationalized by commercial art market intelligence schemes like Artprice and Artnet which compile records of auction and offer price indices, but their analysis is generally descriptive and retrospective Longo and Faraci (2023). Due to the progress of machine learning, in recent times predictive valuation models have been studied based on regression trees, ensemble approaches, and neural networks that are trained with historical auction data. These methods proved more accurate in predicting price and predicting volatility than linear models especially in modeling complicated interactions among artist career paths, market cycles, and collector behavior. Nevertheless, the majority of the works put emphasis on numerical and categorical metadata, neglecting the abundance of visual and material information involved in artworks themselves Huang et al. (2025). Similar studies in the computer vision field have explored the problem of artwork classification, artist attribution and forgery detection through convolutional neural networks with deep feature embedding. It has been found that brushstroke patterns, color distributions and texture features are quantifiable to the point of being used to identify artists and styles; this is useful in authenticity studies. Nevertheless, these vision-based methods would be promising, but they are usually developed without using market and provenance information, restricting their applicability to the comprehensive decision-making of collectors. More recent interdisciplinary projects are in the process of building up multimodal data, i.e. integrating images, records of provenance in text and sales history using deep learning and graph-based representations Villaespesa and Murphy (2021). Knowledge graphs and natural language processing have been suggested as a provenance modelling system to track the ownership chain down and identify discrepancies in historical records. Individually, art critical sentiment analysis and social media sentiment analysis have been studied as a proxy of cultural relevance and immediate market momentum. Table 1 summarizes previous art market and collecting decision support methods that use AI. Regardless of such progress, the majority of current systems are task-oriented, focusing on valuation or authenticity, or market analysis, but not in a cohesive decision support system. Table 1
3. Conceptual Framework 3.1. AI-enabled multi-criteria decision support model The conceptual framework is proposed, which is based on the AI-supported multi-criteria decision support model that would represent the multifaceted and complicated character of art collecting. This model offers an opportunity to evaluate the value of objects simultaneously in financial terms, as well as in terms of authenticity confidence, market risk, cultural relevance, and preferences exclusive to a collector, which is why it is not a single-objective valuation tool. Each of the criteria is represented as an independent yet interrelated analytical dimension, which means that the system can analyze the artworks as a whole, instead of analyzing them with individual measures. In Figure 1, we can see an AI-based platform that incorporates aesthetics, provenance, value and risk in the eyes of the collector. Machine learning software provides quantitative ratings of each of the criteria that can be combined with adaptive weighting schemes that can be designed by collector according to investment objectives, risk appetite, or curatorial interests. Figure 1 |
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Table 2 Art Valuation and Market Prediction Performance Comparison |
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Model / Approach |
MAE (USD) |
RMSE (USD) |
Valuation Accuracy (%) |
Price Trend Prediction Accuracy (%) |
|
Expert-Based Manual Valuation |
48,200 |
63,750 |
71.6 |
68.4 |
|
Hedonic Pricing Model |
39,850 |
55,120 |
78.9 |
74.2 |
|
ML (Metadata Only) |
31,460 |
46,980 |
84.3 |
81.7 |
|
ML + Market Signals |
26,930 |
41,205 |
88.6 |
86.9 |
Table 2 shows that there is a definite increase and gradual rise in the performance of the art valuation and market prediction with an increase in the sophistication of the analysis. The highest level of errors (MAE = 48,200 USD; RMSE = 63,750 USD) is observed with expert-based manual valuation which is subjective, is not scalable and reacts very slowly to the dynamics in the market. Figure 3 provides the comparison of methods accuracy on valuation based on MAE and RMSE measures.
Figure 3

Figure 3 Comparison of Art Valuation Methods Using MAE and RMSE Metrics
Hedonic pricing model minimizes error and increases the accuracy of valuation to 78.9 which indicates the advantage of systematic economic variables but is limited by linearity and lacks flexibilities. Models trained on metadata only again yield better results with MAE coming down to 31,460 USD and valuation accuracy going up to 84.3%. Figure 4 depicts the effectiveness of market signals in enhancing reliability in valuation and predicting price trend. This shows that non-linear learning is effective in incorporating intricate pricing relationships. The approach with the best performance is the ML + Market Signals, which has been able to combine dynamic indicators including trends and sentiment.
Figure 4

Figure 4 Impact of Market Signals on Art Valuation and Price Trend Accuracy
This model has the fewest errors (MAE = 26,930 USD; RMSE = 41,205 USD) as well as the highest levels of valuation (88.6) and accuracy of predicting trends (86.9). Such findings highlight that temporal market intelligence must be integrated in order to have reliable and future-looking art investment decisions.
Table 3
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Table 3 Authenticity Detection and Risk Assessment Performance |
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Method |
Authenticity Classification Accuracy (%) |
Forgery Detection Recall (%) |
Provenance Consistency Score (%) |
False Authenticity Risk (%) |
|
Expert Visual Inspection |
76.4 |
69.8 |
78.6 |
18.9 |
|
Provenance Analysis Only |
81.2 |
74.6 |
85.1 |
14.7 |
|
Computer Vision Only |
86.9 |
82.3 |
72.4 |
10.6 |
Table 3 provides the comparison of various methods of authenticity detection and risk evaluation which identify the advantages and weaknesses of each particular analysis strategy. Expert visual detection has intermediate classification accuracy of authenticity (76.4) but it has a relatively low forgery detection recall (69.8) and a high false authenticity risk (18.9) of authenticity. These findings indicate how manual assessment is inherently subjective and can easily be forged using advanced methods. Provenance analysis single-handedly enhances classification accuracy to 81.2% and provenance consistency to 85.1% which means the importance of recorded ownership and exhibition records. In Figure 5, accuracy and robustness of the various methods of authentication of artwork is compared. But it is not recalled so much (74.6%), because forged works may have convincing documentation. The analysis provided by computer vision provides the best classification success (86.9) and recall of the forgery detection (82.3), proving the success of the deep visual feature analysis in the detection of stylistic and material differences. However, the fact that it has one of the lowest provenance consistency scores (72.4) is a major limitation: visual similarity is not an indicator of historical validity. The relative findings underscore the fact that even though each of the individual approaches does have quantifiable benefits, none of them is effective enough to reduce the possibility of a false authenticity to an acceptable degree.
Figure 5

Figure 5 Comparative Performance of Artwork Authentication
Methods
This observation supports the necessity of combined visual and provenance-based AI ones in order to have a powerful and risk-aware authenticity evaluation.
8. Conclusion
The proposed study introduced an AI-based decision support system aligned with the versatile requirements of art collectors that must work in an ever-more multifaceted and data-rich setting of the marketplace. The proposed system functions will help overcome major weaknesses of the traditional art advisory business, such as subjectivity, information asymmetry, and lack of scalability, by incorporating automated valuation, authenticity detection, and market forecasting in a single, multi-criteria decision support architecture. The framework illustrates how the data in multimodal art images, provenance data, expert labels, sentiment data and sales history could be changed into explainable, actionable intelligence. The findings validate the fact that AI-based valuation models may be more accurate and better aware of uncertainty in the valuation of fair market value, whereas authenticity analysis can be more effective when using visual similarity evaluation alongside provenance reasoning instead of basing it solely on one of the two sources. Market forecasting also puts these outputs into context in order to model price dynamics and volatility allowing collectors to make risk-sensitive and strategically timed decisions. Notably, the system should be a human-oriented decision support system with transparency, interpretability, and configurable priorities to assure consistency with curatorial discretion and values of ethics.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
None.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
None.
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