An antique appraiser explains how ChatGPT can triage appointments and sort photos, but can't authenticate items needing specialist knowledge like Chinese antiques, Roman artifacts, or watches that must be opened. AI can filter low-value calls, but it can't replace expert judgment or write you a check.
Now I know it doesn't sound like it goes together, but I'm going to talk a little bit about antiques and AI. As Schumer's son said, it's related in all our businesses. So the first thing I'm going to say is it is helpful and it has gotten better. A couple years ago, Google Image was AI, and you could Google Image a poster on your wall of a Monet and it says it's worth $10 million. Now it's gotten a lot better, and I use it every day. And I'll tell you something that's good about it is a lot of my jobs I can't go. I get 20, 30, calls a day and a lot of them are not worth it, but it's hard for me to filter those out. So what I do is I get a lot of pictures. So with AI right now, I could plug in a PDF with 100 pictures in it and ChatGPT will tell me this call is worth going on or not. It could also tell me if the— what the 5 best items on that appointment could potentially be and what to look into. Okay. The issue is not everyone knows the limitations There are certain items in my world that cannot be researched online because it needs a specialist like myself or one of my specific specialists. An example of this is Chinese antiques. Everyone makes amazing copies. The Chinese are really good at making copies of something that's 300 years old and it was made yesterday. Looks just like it. So a picture cannot tell that story. Ancient Roman and Greek items, you have to have an expert. Even myself, I can't tell that stuff. My expert needs to. A picture cannot tell the story. You cannot use AI for those things. And artwork. Artwork is another example where it's a picture of a painting. You need the provenance. What's the background? Where did it come from? Is it real? Is it a copy? It could be a 100-year-old copy of something 300 years old. AI cannot tell you that. And another good example is with Lou. If I have a watch and I take a picture of a watch, AI can tell me that it looks right. The other day it actually said, my gut tells me. I'm like, AI has a gut? But it literally says that. But with Lou, he tells me. Sometimes I'm upset. I'm like, dude, you can't tell me if it's right or wrong? He's like, no, you have to bring it in. I need to open it up, which is the right answer. And I like specialists like that to tell me so I don't use AI because I have the real deal in front of me and they can help me. So it's good. But when a client tells me that ChatGPT says it's worth $5,000 and you're only offering me $3,000, I say, can ChatGPT write you a check? The answer is no. So until that happens, thank goodness I still have a job. Please subscribe so you don't miss any future videos.
