🔍 In this episode of Humans of AI, Henk van Stappen and Tobias Hendrickx take us inside MODAL, a project exploring how AI can make large born-digital cultural heritage archives more accessible and discoverable. They discuss working with smaller, open-source models, the challenges of speech-to-text for Flemish dialects, and why cultural heritage institutions don’t always need the biggest AI models.

📌 About Our Guests

Henk Vanstappen & Tobias Hendrickx | MODAL

🌐 https://www.linkedin.com/in/henkvanstappen/

🌐 https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-hendrickx-77b804123/

🌐 https://advn.be/nl/over-advn/projecten/modal-project

Henk Vanstappen is co-founder and senior consultant at Datable, where he advises cultural heritage organisations on digital strategies connecting technology, data and collections. With a background in Arts and Philosophy and Information Sciences, he has worked on digital heritage projects since 2004, with expertise in digitisation, metadata, digital collections and emerging technologies such as machine learning and generative AI.

Tobias Hendrickx works at MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp, where he is involved in the management and accessibility of the museum’s digital archives. Within MODAL, he explored how AI can help make born-digital fashion archives more discoverable, including through speech-to-text and metadata generation.

MODAL (Metadata and Access to Digital Archives using Large Language Models) is a two-year research project supported by the Flemish Government, investigating how generative AI can support the cultural heritage sector. The project aims to develop a practical application for archivists and collection managers, helping them explore large born-digital archives and make faster decisions about processing and eventually opening up their collections. Alongside the technology, MODAL also focuses on sharing knowledge and encouraging collaboration around AI and cultural heritage.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #GenerativeAI

🔍 In this episode of Humans of AI, Winnie Lam, co-founder of Plinth, explores how AI can help unlock the stories hidden within our digital cultural heritage. From 3D digitisation to semantic search, we discuss how AI can connect collections, uncover new insights and turn cultural heritage into engaging experiences for the public, while keeping reliable sources and human creativity at the centre.

📌 About Our Guests

Winnie Lam | plinth

🌐 linkedin.com/in/wingyanlam

🌐 https://plinth.it/

Winnie Lam is the Co-Founder of Plinth, where she leads the company’s vision for expanding the reuse of digital cultural heritage. Her work focuses on how cultural institutions can transform digitised collections into creative experiences that generate wider public value.

With a background spanning technology, entrepreneurship, and cultural innovation, Winnie is particularly interested in the role of bridge actors who connect heritage assets with audiences and real-world uses. She is currently exploring how AI can unlock the value of Europe’s text-based heritage through more meaningful discovery, interpretation, and responsible reuse.

Plinth is an organisation that uses 3D digitisation and AI driven technologies to make cultural heritage more accessible and engaging. It helps museums, galleries and other cultural institutions create detailed digital versions of artworks and connect collections through semantic search, making it easier for people to discover, explore and reuse cultural heritage.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #GenerativeAI

🔍 In this episode of Humans of AI, Matthias and Bart from meemoo share how they use AI to make millions of digital heritage assets more discoverable while keeping archivists, ethics, privacy and human judgment at the centre. We discuss automated transcription, summarisation and facial recognition, and what it takes to adopt AI responsibly and at scale.

📌 About Our Guests

Matthias Priem & Bart Magnus | meemoo

🌐 linkedin.com/in/matthiaspriem

🌐 linkedin.com/in/bart-magnus-557b384

🌐 https://meemoo.be/

Matthias Priem is a Manager of Archiving at meemoo, Flemish institute for archives, a Belgian organisation that provides services on digital heritage processes to cultural, media and government organisations in Flanders. His professional background includes working with infrastructure, software, and metadata, and he studied as an Electronics Engineer at Katholieke Hogeschool 'Sint-Lieven' in Ghent.

Bart Magnus works as an expertise officer at meemoo, Flemish institute for archives, a Belgian organisation that provides services on digital heritage processes to cultural, media and government organisations in Flanders. Bart's domains of work include open data, legal and ethical aspects of AI and GLAM. He's a big fan of public domain, open knowledge, Wikimedia, Creative Commons and of course, Internet Archive.

Meemoo is a Flemish non-profit organisation supported by the government that helps cultural, media, and civic institutions digitally safeguard their heritage. It specialises in digitising, managing, and preserving valuable audiovisual materials, historical newspapers, and artworks to make these accessible and usable for the public, researchers, and educational platforms.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #GenerativeAI