🔍 In this episode, Harry Verwayen from Europeana reflects on how Europe’s cultural heritage sector is responding to the rise of AI while staying rooted in the idea that culture belongs to everyone. He shares the origins of Europeana as a public alternative to private digitization efforts and explains how AI is being used to improve access to millions of cultural objects, guided by long-standing values like openness, authenticity, and provenance.

Harry argues that the real challenge is not technology but adoption, governance, and public trust. As chatbots increasingly replace search engines as the main interface to knowledge, he warns that without sustained public investment and engagement, Europe’s cultural diversity risks becoming invisible in an AI-driven future.

📌 HoAI Highlights

⏲️[00:00] Intro

⏲️[00:48] The Spark

⏲️[02:47] The Impact

⏲️[09:41] The Challenge

⏲️[14:56] The Future

⏲️[20:10] The Takeaway

The Spark

🗣️“Culture heritage belongs to all of us. Why would exclusive access to that only happen through a private entity?”

The Impact

🗣️ “The data really is like a garden, you need to keep nurturing it, because what is a derogative term today may change in the future.”

The Challenge

🗣️ “I don’t think it’s a technological challenge.Tthe technology is there. The question is how do we implement that more widely.”

The Future

🗣️“Library and archival data are the original datasets, and with them comes a value system of authenticity and provenance that AI should inherit.”

The Takeaway

🗣️ “AI chatbot interfaces will be how people interface with knowledge—and if we don’t engage with them, our culture risks becoming invisible."

📌 About Our Guests

Harry Verwayen | Europeana

🌐 linkedin.com/in/harryverwayen

🌐 https://www.europeana.eu/en

Europeana is a digital platform that provides access to millions of cultural heritage items from museums, galleries, libraries, and archives across Europe. It promotes the sharing and reuse of Europe’s cultural collections for education, research, and creativity.

#AI #artificialintelligence #generativeAI

🔍 In this episode of Humans of AI, we explore a research project at the Bowes Museum in County Durham that uses AI-powered eye-tracking glasses to study how visitors engage with artworks. A multidisciplinary team combines digital humanities, psychology, art history, and computer science to understand where people look, how long they spend with paintings, and the impact of exhibition labels.

The episode highlights key findings—such as how briefly most visitors view artworks—and reflects on the ethical limits of AI, the difference between observing behavior and understanding motivation, and the importance of using AI thoughtfully in cultural heritage and beyond.

📌 HoAI Highlights

⏲️[00:00] Intro

⏲️[00:15] The Spark

⏲️[04:32] The Impact

⏲️[07:49] The Challenge

⏲️[13:42] The Future

⏲️[18:51] The Takeaway

The Spark

🗣️“The management at the Bowes were concerned that perhaps this is overwhelming for visitors… do we know that visitors are actually enjoying themselves?”

The Impact

🗣️ “It was horrifying to me how very quickly most people look at things in museums… it’s like 10 seconds, 15 seconds sometimes per painting.”

The Challenge

🗣️ “It is very, very important this is done ethically… because people know they’re being observed, it may change their behavior.”

The Future

🗣️“If we can’t compete in AI, we have no role in regulating what is going on in those organizations.”

The Takeaway

🗣️ “AI is not a terrible thing or a wonderful thing—we need to think about how we use it, where we use it, and where it’s most appropriate.”

📌 About Our Guests

Claire Warwick | Museum Goggles

🌐 linkedin.com/in/claire-warwick-1951272b6

The Bowes Museum “goggles” project used AI-powered eye-tracking glasses to study how visitors view paintings and labels. The research showed that most people look at artworks very quickly, but engaging with labels increases viewing time and enjoyment. The project highlights how AI can analyze behavior at scale while also raising ethical questions and showing its limits in understanding why people do what they do.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #GenerativeAI

🔍 In this episode of Humans of AI, the creators of Litte_bot explain how an idea to celebrate Molière’s 400th anniversary became an innovative project that lets audiences converse with literary characters through AI.

Anna discusses training models to reproduce Molière’s alexandrines, extending the work to Brecht, and the challenges of capturing each writer’s distinct voice. The conversation highlights how AI can revive cultural memory, engage young people with theatre, and support human-centered artistic research.

📌 HoAI Highlights

⏲️[00:00] Intro

⏲️[00:33] The Spark

⏲️[04:08] The Impact

⏲️[07:59] The Challenge

⏲️[12:17] The Future

⏲️[16:39] The Takeaway

The Spark

🗣️“We wanted to use AI not just as a tool, but as a mediator — a way to bring humans into a new dialogue with the past, almost like speaking with a literary ghost made alive again.”

The Impact

🗣️ “It wasn’t just a tool — AI became a bridge to the past.”

The Challenge

🗣️ “Artistic research struggles because we lack access to large computing resources.”

The Future

🗣️“For me, fine-tuning was a way to test how far AI can go in producing not just a writer’s style, but a writer’s way of thinking.”

The Takeaway

🗣️ “We should share these experiences widely — even with philosophers — because they can bring theatre, literature, and philosophy closer to young people.”

Litte_bot is an artistic research project that uses AI to bring classical theatre to life by enabling audiences to interact directly with literary characters. Originally created to celebrate Molière’s 400th anniversary, the team trained generative models on his plays so the chatbot could respond in authentic alexandrines, making cultural memory feel alive and accessible—especially for young people.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #GenerativeAI