India, Oct. 7 -- From mapping loot from orbit to decoding stroke pressure using machine learning, new technologies are revealing sophisticated forgeries and helping catch art criminals faster.

A few weeks ago, a group of researchers at the University of Bradford in the UK stunned the art world when the facial recognition algorithms they used proved that a famous sketch by portrait artist Hans Holbein, supposedly of Anne Boleyn, was not hers. Boleyn, the girl King Henry VIII of England wanted to marry in the 15th century, was one reason the country broke away from the Roman Catholic Church to become Protestant overnight.

The sketch by Holbein, which lies in England's Royal Collection, has been accepted as Boleyn's for two centuries thank...