How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) help us to enrich and research cultural heritage collections? How can ML models be adapted to the complexities of historical and cultural material it has not been trained for? Which biases can we reveal in historical collections? How can we gain new perspectives by using AI in researching cultural heritage data? Our new webinar series will discuss these questions with you and present projects and people who are reflecting on exactly these matters.
‘EuropeanaTech x AI’ will take place every two weeks, beginning on 23 April. Each session will introduce a new project or research topic related to AI in the cultural heritage sector. Every webinar will last around 90 minutes and will be held via Zoom. In the concluding session we will meet with all the speakers in a virtual marketplace to mingle, discuss the projects and exchange ideas.
This webinar series - and especially the concluding session - is a work in progress. If you want to contribute, please get in touch with me (Larissa Borck). We particularly welcome short project pitches or topics for discussion at the virtual marketplace! We are also open to ideas on how to enhance synergies with other efforts within or outside the Europeana community, for example the AI4LAM community.
Dates and topics
The EuropeanaTech x AI webinars will kick off on Friday 23 April with an introduction to the series and the Saint George on a Bike Project, which aims to use machine learning to improve the quality and quantity of open metadata associated with European cultural heritage. Project partners will present its objectives and achievements, as well as the obstacles it faces, especially with respect to available data sources. You will learn about making Machine Learning work (better) for improving the quality and quantity of open metadata associated with European cultural heritage imagery, and have the opportunity to discuss the challenges of data gathering for AI projects in cultural heritage and how to possibly circumvent them. Speakers will be Maria-Cristina Marinescu, Cedric Bhihe, Artem Reshetnikov and Quim More (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) and Albin Larsson (Europeana). Watch the recording.
On Friday 7 May, we will explore Cultural AI, a new lab for culturally valued AI in the Netherlands. The session is titled: 'Cultural AI Lab: Responsible AI and the Politics of Metadata'. The vision of Cultural AI is to accelerate excellent research on the intersection of humanities and artificial intelligence. Core lab themes revolve around public values, like diversity and inclusivity, investigating how technology can deal with biases in data, account for multiple perspectives and subjective interpretations, and bridge cultural differences. At this webinar, the Lab's partners and ancillary research groups will give us an introduction to the project and present examples for the running projects in and related to the Cultural AI Lab. We look forward to hearing from Vendela Grundell Gachoud (Stockholm University), Laura Hollink (Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica and Cultural AI Lab Director), Marieke van Erp (DHLab and Cultural AI Lab Director), Valentin Vogelmann (KNAW Humanities Cluster), Mari Wigham (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision), and Cindy Zalm (National Museum of World Cultures, NL) and Johan Oomen. Watch the recording.
On Friday 21 May we will present Qurator.ai - Curation Technologies, a project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This project is developing an innovative technology platform that supports knowledge workers in various industries to address the challenges they face when curating digital content. In this session, Georg Rehm, DFKI, will introduce Qurator, and we will explore three use cases for AI in cultural heritage curation, including Semantic Storytelling (Stefan Grill, 3pc/Xinnovations); Image Garden (Joachim Quantz, ART+COM); and Qurator in the Library (Clemens Neudecker, Berlin State Library). A panel discussion on AI and digital transformation will conclude the session. Watch the recording.
A further webinar and social event will take place on Friday 2 July, exploring the eScriptorium project, which aims to provide a user-friendly and open platform for the automatic, semi-automatic and manual transcription of texts from digitised images. Watch the recording.
This post was edited on 15/07/21 to add links to the recorded events.