Imagine getting a live art class from Leonardo da Vinci, or having a fully interactive discussion about the meaning of life with Socrates. You can now do this in your living room with a laptop and headset through startups like Ireland’s Engage XR and Sweden’s Hello History, combining the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.
Tradition and technology have often been seen as distinct and even counterfactual, but clearly these technologies are now blurring the lines in ways that can alter how humans engage with cultural heritage.
Here are four emerging trends in this space:
1. New kinds of restoration
Many ancient texts are hard to access because they are close to crumbling or have parts missing, but AI is changing this using machine-learning algorithms to help make sense of fragments that are illegible to the human eye. For instance, this has been used to reveal the contents of papyrusthat was charred …