Nara Buddha is happy, sad, and 23 years old, AI analysis says：The Asahi Shimbun – Asahi Shimbun

OSAKA–The Ashura Buddha statue in Nara’s Kofukuji temple may be silent, but it’s not stone-faced, according to researchers.

It’s actually happy–and sad.

The study team, led by Nara University Vice President Syunichi Sekine, used artificial intelligence (AI) to quantitatively assess expressions of more than 200 Buddhist statues, saying the effort was a world first.

“Different viewers can have various interpretations of the expressions of Buddhist statues,” said Sekine, who also studies art history. “But quantitative analysis will prove helpful for research on Buddhist statues in the future.”

The project was started the last fiscal year and carried out by a total of 18 students, with the results announced Dec. 4.

The Ashura statue, created in 734 during the Nara Period (710-784), is designated by the government as a national treasure.

The group surveyed images of the statues with Microsoft Corp.’s emotion-measuring technology designed to quantify human expressions using eight indicators, such as happy, sad, angry and neutral.

The results showed that most of them had a neutral expression, while the “dakkatsu-kanshitsu-zukuri-style” Ashura statue was relatively less neutral, meaning that its expression is closer to that of humans.

The sadness level of the Ashura statue increased when viewed from the right side, while the happiness value was higher for images taken from the left side.

The analysis estimated the statue’s “age” at 23.

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