Conference Report: AI and the Creative Media, Heritage, Production Distribution and Reception (2026)

By Nina Willment (University of York, UK)

On Friday 6 February 2026, IAMHIST held a one-day symposium at the University of Luxembourg (in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg and the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History) on the theme of ‘AI and the Creative Media: Heritage, Production, Distribution and Reception’. Following a fantastic IAMHIST masterclass the previous day, the symposium brought together scholars, archivists and creative practitioners to critically explore the rapidly expanding role of AI across the creative media sector. The event examined both the opportunities AI presents and the ethical and political challenges it raises for film, media history and contemporary creative practice.

Following a quick introduction by IAMHIST council members Ciara Chambers, President, and Alessandra Luciano, the conference organiser, the day was formally opened by Andreas Fickers, the director of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History. Andreas stressed the importance of an experimental and interdisciplinary mindset in creative media research, reminding us that AI systems are never neutral tools, but are always shaped by institutional priorities, historical data, and human decision-making.

AI, heritage and access:

Following this introduction, Alessandra (Ministry of Culture, Luxembourg) introduced the strategic framework for Luxembourg’s flagship project around AI and intelligent cultural heritage. Alessandra discussed how Luxembourg’s ‘Accelerating Digital Sovereignty 2030’ programme brings together parallel strands on artificial intelligence, data, and quantum technologies, under a national interministerial committee, to develop a national AI strategy. She explained how it is the Luxembourg Government’s ambition to enhance the discoverability, accessibility and understanding of cultural heritage, while actively safeguarding cultural diversity. Looking ahead, the initiative proposes a holistic, ‘hive-mind’ model of collaboration across sectors, with the first flagship projects scheduled to launch in 2026.

Next, Daniel Wagener (Zenter fir d’Lëtzebuerger) introduced the ‘Sproochmaschinn’, a free platform for AI powered voice tools for Luxembourgish. Daniel’s talk highlighted how AI powered speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and language-processing technologies can be used to support smaller or historically marginalised languages, such as Luxmbourgish. Daniel also highlighted how the development and use of these AI language interventions raise important questions about standardisation, linguistic authority, and whose version of language becomes encoded into digital systems.

Next, Yves Maurer (National Library of Luxembourg) explained how AI is being used to improve accessibility within the National Library of Luxembourg and its 1.8 million documents! Yves explained how AI is helping the library to achieve its ambitious aim of digitising its entire heritage collection by 2030. He also showed examples of how AI-driven tools are being deployed to enhance access to vast collections (from newspapers to legal documents) that would otherwise remain partially hidden or unusable.

AI, history and misinformation:

A recurring concern throughout the symposium was AI’s relationship to historical truth and misinformation. Several papers examined how AI-driven methods can be used to analyse historical narratives.

Sarah Oberbicher (University of Luxembourg) explored how AI-assisted analysis of historical disaster reporting can help identify patterns in how misinformation circulates. Using the example of the 1908 Messina Earthquake in Italy, Sarah reframed the misinformation that circulates around national disasters as multiple, conflicting truths. She found that the varied false narrative circulating around disaster events ultimately impact on a Government ability to deal with the aftermath of a crisis event. This finding was particularly relevant given the potential for an increased frequency of natural disasters occurring in wake of the climate crisis.

Vernonica Johnson (independent scholar) then revisited examples of staged and altered images from early film history, using these early cinema examples to challenge assumptions about audience naivety. Rather than passive consumers, early cinema audiences often possessed high levels of visual literacy, able to recognise conventions, tricks and staged realities. What is different in our current day however, is the scale, speed and apparent realism with which synthetic images can now circulate as a result of AI. Veronica highlighted how this raised new questions about trust, authority and evidence in visual cinema and culture.

Jasmin Kermanchi (University of Hamburg) explored the ethical concerns around the increased prominence of generative AI being used in history documentaries. Drawing on examples such as Killer Kings and Deepfake Diaires, she discussed how generative AI tools are increasingly blurring our understanding between what is fact and what is fiction. Jasmin then raised the question of disclosure, suggesting that audiences may need clearer signals, such as labelling practices, to indicate where AI has been used.

After a wonderful morning, discussions continued over a very lovely lunch!

AI and creative practice

The afternoon sessions turned more explicitly to creative production.

Tobias Hochscherf (Kiel University of Applied Sciences) discussed the opportunities and risks for using AI in applied learning in film studies. Tobias discussed how he believed the opportunities for AI were particularly rife in the pre-production and post-production stages of film production. In doing so, he positioned generative AI as a creative sparring partner and ideation tool.

Will Howe (University of Sussex) presented a paper on screenwriting and AI, using Jane Austen’s Persuasion to explore how AI can be used as a collaborative tool, with human creativity defining the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, and AI accelerating the exploration of the ‘how’. Will discussed how AI was useful for uncovering hidden patterns or generating alternative narrative possibilities, but limited in its capacity to produce emotionally nuanced or culturally specific dialogue.

AI and retelling (hidden) histories:

Niall Kerr (Nerve Centre) and Luke McNiece (Hamilton Robson) introduced ‘StoryDreamer’, an AI powered tool being used to capture first-person stories from the people of Belfast. They explained the development of StoryDreamer, as an AI based mechanism for capturing personal stories for future circulation and publication. They highlighted the positive reception to an AI interviewer, which could direct respond to interviewee needs (such as the use of different languages). They also reflected on the recent launch of the StoryDreamer tool, which has had a welcome reception from many sectors of the Belfast community.

Eslam El Shamy (Lo(C)ai- Lab of Creative / Critical AI) then examined how AI can help bring marginalised or forgotten histories to life where ‘archival violence’ has meant these stories have been deliberately removed or not included within archives. He showcased his creative practice of using AI to bring the forgotten stories of WW2 Egyptian workers to life through film. While these approaches offer exciting possibilities for recovery and representation, Eslam cautioned against treating AI as a neutral ‘memory machine.’ Historical memory, he argued, is always shaped by ethical choices, omissions and power relations.

Yekta Kalantar Hormozi (TU Dublin / Maynooth University) rounded off a fantastic set of presentations. Yekta introduce the interaction tool she had developed for game designers to help them ensure the cultural adaptations they included in their games are appropriate representations of real-world cultures and events. Through insights from her work with games 30 Birds and 1001 Nights, Yekta showcased how game designers often lack process level support around cultural adaptations, and that cultural misrepresentation is important as it otherwise risks ethical, creative and commercial impact.

Warning: This symposium *may* contain traces of AI..

AI is already reshaping how heritage is accessed, how stories are produced, how media circulates, and how audiences make sense of images and narratives. Yet the discussions across the day made it clear that these transformations demand sustained critical engagement. By situating AI within longer histories of media practice and cultural power, the symposium offered a timely and nuanced intervention. Rather than asking what AI can do for creative media, speakers repeatedly asked what kinds of futures, and whose histories, are being shaped through its use.

These questions were further pondered and mused over during a wonderful book launch of Archiving the Referendum: BBC Scotland’s Television Archive and the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) by Mhairi Brennan (Aston University). Here, Mhairi introduced the premise of her book, which foregrounds the archive as a powerful memory-making infrastructure rather than a neutral repository. Through close textual analysis and interviews with archivists and programme-makers, Mhairi discussed how institutional policy, labour conditions and access frameworks shape what can be preserved, reused and ultimately remembered, an intervention that resonated strongly with the conference’s wider concerns around mediation, authority and the politics of archival storytelling. This launch was followed by a fantastic wine reception.