Artificial intelligence and digital cultural policy is a priority area for cultural research at Telemarksforsking. Through several completed and planned research projects, we develop updated knowledge about what happens when culture is digital and when it can be created by machines and not humans.
Digital Cultural Policy
It has been a long time since cultural policy and cultural production began to be influenced by digitalization. At the same time, there is little doubt that the digital influence on cultural policy has progressed slowly, and that there are still several unresolved questions related to how public cultural policy should relate to digital culture. This has been a topic for research at Telemarksforsking for more than ten years. The topic has also become highly relevant through the development of artificial intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence
The development and use of artificial intelligence is a topic that is very relevant for both cultural production and (digital) cultural policy. Over the past two years, and especially after the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, we have seen regular reports about how things are changing rapidly in this area: Towards the end of 2022, the Museum of Modern Art in New York included a large work that was generated and updated by an artificial intelligence in its exhibitions. At the beginning of 2023, a number of American cultural workers filed lawsuits against the major AI companies for copyright infringement, as they believed that the language models were trained on their intellectual works. Here at home, organizations that represent cultural workers, such as Creo and Grafill, have also called for a more active stance from cultural policy authorities on the question of artificial intelligence.
Telemarksforsking has since the beginning of 2023 worked to develop knowledge about and obtain an overview of possible consequences of artificial intelligence in these areas. We have applied to the Research Council for funding for a multi-year project that examines how the development of artificial intelligence challenges both the production and use of culture, and not least how a public cultural policy should relate to art that is produced by machines. Should it, for example, be a public task to support and distribute text and images generated by artificial intelligence? And who has rights to these cultural products?
Telemarksforsking has also raised these topics through presentations at conferences and panel debates in central arenas. In 2023, for example, we were responsible for a panel debate during Kulturytring Drammen that put the topic on the agenda. Currently, we are working among other things to obtain an overview of how various strategy and policy documents, both in Norway, the Nordic countries and Europe, relate to the intersection between cultural production and artificial intelligence.