Promise or Peril: The dual edges of AI in cultural heritage and the Ouroboros effect

<p xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="first" dir="auto" id="d4047362e55">The more I think about the fantastic possibilities that AI holds for the creation and management of cultural assets, including music, images, text, movies, and dance, and yes - even the potential for digital smell - the more I worry about the ill effects and the potential for malevolent outcomes, either intentional or not. After a lifetime in the museum sector, I would like to pause and think about how this tsunami of AI-generated content affects cultural heritage and human creativity, for the good and not-so-good, drawing on examples of AI in action and creating new experiences and, sadly, new headaches for our sector. Although I find the innumerable possibilities of AI-generated platforms exhilarating, I am concerned about what could go wrong with all these tantalizing yet daunting options. In this paper, I will focus on some of the more welcome outcomes and several excellent study cases where AI is employed in the field. At the same time, I fear that things can go very wrong as AI-generated content permeates, and challenges all aspects of our lives. My concerns led me to conclude that our traditional and lived culture is entering a new phase – one polluted by the Ouroboros Effect. Where once the ancient Ouroboros, the snake or dragon eating its tail, was associated with an eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth, I suggest that the self-devouring serpent reflects the way that AI is devouring the very pulse of life from self, from artistic imagination and human creativity only to vomit a sloppy residue of generic and mediocre content that is gravitating to the average. These artifacts, images, music, films, and objects are all easily produced, highly profitable, and severely lacking in any sign of ‘life.’ This boomerangs us back to what Walter Benjamin described in his seminal work where he described as the aura and argued in 1939 that the mechanical reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. The Ouroboros has by now sucked in so much unique human creativity into its belly and has regurgitated so much slop into our lives that we can but wonder whether we are losing the battle. Could we possibly be swiftly reaching the point of no return?