ai in museums: reflections, perspectives and applications

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly important topic in the cultural sector. While museums have long focused on building digital object databases, the existing data can now become a field of application for machine learning, deep learning and foundation model approaches. This goes hand in hand with new artistic practices, curation tools, visitor analytics, chatbots, automatic translations and tailor-made text generation. With a decidedly interdisciplinary approach, the volume brings together a wide range of critical reflections, practical perspectives and concrete applications of artificial intelligence in museums, and provides an overview of the current state of the debate.

Sonja Thiel is a digital catalyst for Artificial Intelligence at Badisches Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe. She has a background in history and philosophy and has worked as a curator for participatory processes at various cultural history museums. Her work focuses on the intersections between museology, participatory curatorial practice and open digital education.
Johannes Bernhardt is historian and digital manager at Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe. After ten years at the universities of Freiburg, Mannheim, and Bochum, he moved to the museum in 2017 to develop a digitization concept for the Friedrich Creuzer Collection. In 2018-2020, he led the Creative Collections project, working at the intersection of digital and participation and designing digital projects ranging from playful apps to AI prototypes.