The cover of a new report on AI from a US museum thinktank restyles the Sistine Chapel’s Creation of Adam, with the hand of God replaced by a Terminator-style robotic one. So far so obvious.

In Remuseum’s Five Ways AI Can Humanise Museums, AI has presumably replaced God as the enabler of all things. But who is Adam’s hand supposed to represent: the museum visitor or the museum worker?

Or could it be the figure of the artist, being granted the power to create new worlds with AI? Creating worlds is exactly what artists can do, and paying attention to their creative and critical uses of AI is an urgent task for art museums today.

This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

Written by Remuseum’s founding director Stephen Reily, the report deftly introduces, by way of case studies from seven major American art museums, different ways in which the adoption of AI systems might enhance what they offer.

From communicating with visitors (many museums now have chatbots) to streamlining curatorial tasks, the report shares knowledge from projects which have used AI to develop marketing programmes, aid in fundraising, build relationships with sponsors, facilitate access to collection records online, train staff in new technology, and offer new means of art interpretation.

As a professor of museum studies, and a longtime curator of art that uses........

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