BY NOELLE RANGRAS
This November, the Cleveland Museum of Art is preparing to update their ‘ArtLens’ app, featuring a wide array of new Artificial Intelligence features. These features are being implemented to “create transformative experiences through art, for the benefit of all the people forever,” said the director of the museum, Bill Griswold. ArtLens allows guests to purchase tickets and create a ‘guided tour’ based on their ticket type and how much time they want to spend at the museum. The app even lets users ‘digitally explore’ exhibits, meaning they never have to leave their home to ‘visit’ the museum.
More and more museums around the world are introducing AI across exhibits, ticketing, guest services, and more. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Moving Images have AI in certain exhibits. This introduction has some visitors disheartened, and many museum employees worried.
Asia Baker works at the American Museum of Natural History in guest services, and describes her job as being the “face of the museum.” The first person guests see when they visit the museum, Baker talks guests through ticket options and add-on exhibits, and has been working at the museum since 2024. “I’ll be completely honest with you,” said Baker, “I don’t even know how long I have left at my job.” Ticketing is something that can easily passed on to a chatbot, and with apps such as ArtLens, guests need not talk to a museum employee to figure out what exhibits they’d like to visit.
Baker talked about recent “random fires” of co-workers and worried she may be next. “I’m on edge right now, I made a mistake on the POS yesterday and thought I was gonna lose my job.” A
simple human error that would have resulted in a light warning, she explained, or an additional training module, now comes with the threat of getting fired. AI services make human employees “replaceable”, Baker said.
The Boston Globe reported that museums there are using generative AI to “bring history to life,” by creating interactive holograms of existing art works. Krya Seher, an art student at New York University, says that she is not looking forward to her favourite art works having AI influence over them. “I’m imagining a Mona Lisa hologram speaking to me,” said Seher, “I just don’t need that… it isn’t appealing to me.” She also described concern about the ethical ramifications of feeding art into AI models to let AI “train itself to copy and paste.”
In a global survey conducted by UNESCO and the International Council of Museums, 57% of museums across 90 countries are actively using AI. The survey found that 55% of these museums do not have an AI governance policy in place.
Spending on AI drains funds that could be routed to museum exhibits. Custom AI systems, such as the one used at the Cleveland Museum of Art, can take up to a year to develop, and can cost up to $500,000. Meanwhile, Baker shares that the historic ‘Hall of African People’ at the American Museum of Natural History is projected to shut down within the next two years, due to lack of funds. “It is horrifying to hear,” Seher said. “Museums are supposed to be home for art, not AI.”