News

What Do We Save? AI, Archives & Cultural Memory

A public conversation at Kenyon College on preservation choices, the limits of AI-assisted reconstruction, and the governance of archival access and interpretation.

AI4LAM Fantastic Futures 2026

Team member Abigail Foster will volunteer at Trust in the Loop, the 2026 conference of Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives & Museums. The Washington, DC conference is co-hosted by the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, and Smithsonian Institution.

Louisiana French research with Nous Foundation

Archival Intelligence and Nous Foundation Inc., doing business as the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures, signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding establishing Nous as a Community and Cultural Partner.

The initial research focus is Louisiana French in written and recorded archival materials. The collaboration brings linguistic, historical, and community expertise to the evaluation and improvement of existing models, with attention to regional vocabulary, historical spelling, language variation, code-switching, attribution, access, and appropriate use.

Materials of interest include newspapers, correspondence, sheet music, photographs, recordings, and oral histories connected to Louisiana French language and culture.

Summer 2026 research

The summer research program examined candidate archival collections, historical context and provenance, OCR performance on difficult newspapers and documents, museum and archive systems, metadata and institutional workflows, language variation, and interface requirements.

Jessica Daugherty and Ty Kushi conducted dataset research. Ayesha Aslam and Ashwin Krishnan contributed to OCR benchmarking. Adrian Mangine reviewed collection-management systems. Abigail Foster, Cat Ashley Fairchild Perloff, and Jenna Nolt contributed research on museum practice, digitization, metadata, stewardship, and adoption. Nic Pechon-Elkins investigated language preservation and orthographic variation, while Lori Landay developed interface research and early design studies. Anne-Duncan Enright coordinated the program and initiated discussions with Nous Foundation.

The work identified limitations in existing recognition, search, interoperability, export, and archival-data systems and informed the next phase of pipeline research. Further information appears on the Team page.

Open Heritage Statement

Archival Intelligence became a signatory to the Open Heritage Statement, an international initiative developed through the Creative Commons-convened Open Heritage Coalition.

The Statement connects public access with stewardship, community participation, cultural sensitivity, and data sovereignty. These principles inform the project's treatment of provenance, attribution, permissions, and reuse.

The Dual Edge: AI’s Impact on Cultural Production and Preservation

Katherine Elkins contributes a chapter to the forthcoming UNESCO volume Artificial Intelligence and Culture: A Global Perspective from Cairo. It examines generative AI and cultural production and includes early Archival Intelligence research on poorly digitized New Orleans materials.

Language-sensitive model evaluation

Katherine Elkins and Jon Chun co-lead the Modern Language Association team participating in NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation. Their work applies humanistic methods to model evaluation, with particular attention to cases in which linguistic framing changes model behavior.

Related public work includes When Prohibitions Become Permissions, a benchmark study of how language models respond to negated instructions. This research is distinct from Archival Intelligence but informs its approach to language variation, model reliability, and human review.

Written in Code

A Kenyon Alumni Magazine feature on the College's human-centered AI program, including the origins and aims of Archival Intelligence.

If Open Source Is to Win, It Must Go Public

In this position paper, Katherine Elkins and seven co-authors argue that open-source models require complementary public infrastructure and institutions if they are to be broadly accessible, maintained, and governed in the public interest. The argument provides a wider policy context for Archival Intelligence’s commitment to open tools.

Could AI Save Endangered Archives?

The Ohio Newsroom reports on the project’s plans for an open archival AI system, its New Orleans research materials, and the role of human review in archival interpretation.

AI Safety Research and the Humanities

Katherine Elkins discusses AI safety research and the role of the humanities in AI governance.

Kenyon Receives Major Gift for AI Work That Advances the Humanities

Kenyon College’s announcement of the $330,000 Schmidt Sciences award supporting development of an open AI system for endangered archives in underrepresented communities.

Kenyon College Receives $330K Gift for Innovative AI-Humanities Project

Local coverage of the Schmidt Sciences award and the project’s intended application beyond its initial New Orleans research setting.

Where AI Meets the Humanities

A feature on Kenyon College’s human-centered AI program and the interdisciplinary research context from which Archival Intelligence developed.

OpenAI Higher Education Forum

Katherine Elkins presented computational-humanities research related to the Archival Intelligence methodology at OpenAI’s Education Guild Higher Education Forum.

HAVI Grant Award Announcement

Schmidt Sciences selected Archival Intelligence as one of 23 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute teams. The 18-month project received a $330,000 award.

New Orleans Jazz Museum Collaboration

The New Orleans Jazz Museum provides the project’s initial institutional and cultural setting for research on heterogeneous archives related to the emergence of jazz.