Research, then review
A Full Research report is built in two steps. First, research. Using your photos, listing link, documents, or details, an OpenAI model searches public sources — auction records, sales and listings, museum and catalogue references, maker and artist documentation — and writes a research report with links to its sources.
Then, review. A separate model from Anthropic (Claude) reviews the completed report against the sources and evidence supplied with it. It looks for anything important that appears incorrect, unsupported, uncertain, contradictory, misleading, or missing. It does not write a second report, and it is instructed not to invent corrections the evidence does not support.
What the review is, and is not
The review is a second-model check of the finished research. It does not re-fetch every cited page, and it does not grade each claim one by one. Its job is to point out material problems and open questions. The sources stay in the report so you can check them yourself.
Starting from a photo
When a photo is all you have, a vision model (Google Gemini) reads it first: marks, signatures, labels, materials, and form. What it suggests is treated as an unverified lead, not a conclusion, and the research step checks it against the public record. This is identification, not authentication. Close-ups of marks, labels, and undersides help. If a photo cannot be identified, the report says so.
Sales, asking prices, and estimates
Completed sales, asking prices, estimates, and starting bids are all market evidence, but only a completed sale is a realized price. The report labels which is which. Listings are much easier to find online than results, so blending them can give a misleading picture of the market.
A first sale by a living artist and a later resale are also different kinds of evidence, and the report reads each in context.
Values and authenticity
ArtMax does not state authenticity, attribution, or value as fact. A past sale is a record of one sale on one day, and the report presents it that way. Those judgments belong to qualified people who can examine the object.
The providers we use
Research runs on OpenAI and review on Anthropic; photo identification uses Google (Gemini). Your account and saved objects are stored with Supabase, and the app is served by Vercel. What you submit is sent to these providers only to produce your research, and it is not used to train their models. See the Privacy Policy for details.
Limits
This is AI-assisted research, and it can be wrong. Sources can be wrong, stale, or behind a paywall, and the market picture is built from what the research found, not from every sale that exists. ArtMax is not an appraisal, an authentication, or investment advice. See Accuracy & limits and our Terms.