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Today, the common European data space for cultural heritage, stewarded by the Europeana Initiative, published its white paper “The case for Public AI: making it happen with cultural heritage.” This is an important publication from a sector that will be a vital pillar of the emerging Public AI ecosystem, and anyone working on public-interest AI should take note.
At its core, the paper argues that Europe does not have to choose between regulation and innovation, or accept that the foundations of AI will be set by a handful of private actors. It makes the case for a distinctly European, public-interest path, and it asks the cultural heritage sector to play an active part in building it: as a steward of high-quality, multilingual, well-documented data; as a reliable intermediary that can govern access and reuse on fair and reciprocal terms; as a contributor to smaller, domain-relevant models; and as an engine for public AI literacy. These are concrete, operational roles, grounded in the sector’s public mission. Together, they show where public institutions can make a distinctive contribution and how that contribution can correct for the current market-centric push to build European AI at any cost.
The Case for Public AI is an important step on the road to the AI Strategy for the Cultural and Creative Sectors, which the European Commission has signaled for 2027. It gives the cultural heritage sector a clear, shared basis from which to speak with one voice and to define its position within an information ecosystem that is increasingly shaped by generative AI and the new information loops it enables. AI is a socio-cultural technology that is rapidly becoming the main interface through which people access culture and information, and the cultural sector must therefore play a central role in shaping how it is embedded in society. This raises important questions about purpose and governance that the forthcoming strategy will need to address. The new white paper makes clear that such a strategy must not focus on AI adoption by these sectors, but on how they can shape the technology for better societal outcomes.
Open Future was commissioned to write an early concept note, AI, cultural heritage, and the public interest, which fed into this work and drew on our earlier thinking on Public AI. But the credit for the white paper belongs to the Europeana Initiative, the data space community, and the more than 400 professionals who shaped it through the Alignment Assembly on Culture for AI.
That is what we find most encouraging. It is one thing to argue for Public AI in a policy paper; it is another to see the idea resonate so clearly and concretely among the institutions that steward Europe’s cultural memory. When these organizations make the case in their own name and commit to a shared program of action, Public AI stops being a proposal made on their behalf and becomes a direction the sector has chosen for itself. We look forward to supporting that work as it develops.
