1. An authentication system for authenticating an object, comprising: a capture device for capturing at least one biometric output data record (BD) for the object; a reading device for reading configuration data (Konf), associated with the object, for an artificial neural network; a processing device which is designed to produce the artificial neural network and to input the biometric output data record (BD) into the neural network; a verification device which captures an output from the neural network in order to authenticate the object, wherein the neural network is a bidirectional associative memory, particularly a Hopfield network, having a multiplicity of network states and the verification device is designed to determine the output from the neural network by capturing a final state derived from the input of the biometric output data record (BD).