The Museums + AI Network

What possible applications and added value do artificial intelligence processes offer museums? – While the topic was still unfamiliar to many museum professionals in 2021, the challenges and potential of the transformative topic of artificial intelligence have become lively part of the debate and professional development in museums. Oonagh Murphy (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Elena Villaespesa (School of Information, Pratt Institute) founded the Museums + AI Network in 2019 and developed a toolkit for exploring the topic in workshops.

As part of the AI initiative at Badisches Landesmuseum together with LINK Master of the Lower Saxony Foundation, it was possible to open up the Museums + AI Network to German-speaking countries and to organise several Sharing & Learning events during the project in order to bundle initiatives, tools and knowledge and promote a collegial exchange.

The English network and the translations of the toolkit, as well as the professional, collegial exchange with the Dutch, German and English-speaking network, have paid off: Many exchange and learning events, negotiations on ethical and legal issues and creative possibilities were initiated, practised or participated in during the last years. The German-speaking network met in various events and issued several publications between 2021 and 2023, helping to support the debate, positions and ethical guidelines relating to the use of AI in museums.

With the conference proceedings from 2022 we would like to encourage further exchange within the network and support next levels of developments.

Workshops within the Museums + AI Network (DE)

2021 – Dr Oonagh Murphy & Dr Elena Villaespesa, Network Kick Off Event, LINKed: KI als Werkzeug in Museen, Stiftung Niedersachsen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMacJ9WBa-k

2021 – Sonja Thiel & Dr Tabea Golgath, Netzwerk KI und Museen, MAI-light III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkJcoasX7Q&list=PLr2RlGaUOq36Lt6S3GJ3qkiqT7put3MhB&index=2

2021 – Tristan Post, Applied AI – Training

2021 – Dr Werner Schweibenz, Musis: Übersetzen mit Künstlicher Intelligenz

2021 – Jens Rauenbusch, 3pc, Storytelling mit Künstlicher Intelligenz

2021 – Dr Rudolf Seising, Projekt IGGI – Ingenieur-Geist und Geistes-Ingenieure

2021 – Dr Christian Vater, Geschichte der Künstlichen Intelligenz als Digitalisierung der Kopfarbeit

2021 – Holger Kurtz, Mit Python eine Text-KI trainieren. Hands-On– Kurator*innentexte aus dem Rijksmuseum

2021 – Sonja Thiel & Johannes Bernhardt, AI & Ethics, Kultur trifft KI: Forum für eine Kulturpolitik der KI

2022 – Felix Lange, digiS Berlin: Klassifikator von Architekurfotografie

2022 – Irina Loza & Iwana Schmidt, Kiel University of Applied Sciences, Clustering von Nutzerdaten

2022 – Martin Lorenz, NavigatingArt

2022 – KI und Datenethik in der Kultur, in cooperation with LINKed, Stiftung Niedersachsen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzjtZiAzK4

2023 – GPT für Archive und Museen? Große Sprachmodelle verstehen und einsetzen, with contributions by Prof. Dr Gurevych, UKP Lab, TU Darmstadt; Heleen Wilbrink, Het Utrechts Archief / Aincient; Etienne Posthumus, Allard Pierson Amsterdam & Sonja Thiel, Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe https://www.museumsfernsehen.de/prof-dr-iryna-gurevych-ukp-lab-tu-darmstadt-large-language-models-in-museums/

2023 – Etienne Posthumus & Sonja Thiel, GPT Function Calls and Prompt Evaluation

2023 – Thomas Geissl, Bot or Not

2023 – Thomas Uhde, Navigating Art (Fokus LLM)

Resources