Italian police used AI to trace a 17th-century painting missing for 20 years

Italy's Carabinieri art-crime unit used SWOADS, an AI matching system, to identify a 17th-century painting of Saint Agnese missing for 20 years. Officers uploaded photographs from an antiques fair in October 2024; one showed a young woman holding a scroll, flagged as a match. The painting, taken from Virgo Potens church in Sulmona, Abruzzo, has been returned, ArtNews reports.