China News Service, Haikou, November 13 (Reporter Wang Ziqian) Currently, the AI wave sweeping the world is profoundly reshaping the development paradigm of the museum industry from multiple dimensions such as conservation, research, exhibition, and dissemination. Guan Qiang, chairman of the China Museum Association, pointed out in Haikou on the 13th that while the industry is using AI to empower development, it must grasp the value boundaries of technology applications. "It is necessary to make good use of AI to assist content production, but also to be wary of technicalism, and do not allow AI to arbitrarily interpret history and misinterpret the connotation of cultural relics."
The 11th China Museum and Related Products and Technology Expo (referred to as the "Expo") opened in Haikou on the 13th. Guan Qiang delivered a keynote speech titled "From the Palace of Civilization to the Window of Wisdom - A Two-way Journey between Museums and Scientific and Technological Progress" at the main forum of the exhibition.
In Guan Qiang’s view, museums and scientific and technological progress go in both directions and go together: museums preserve physical evidence, build memories, and provide reflection for science and technology, and science and technology help museums expand the precision of preservation, the breadth of communication, and the depth of interpretation.
He believes that museums, as participants in scientific and technological progress, are constantly affected by technology and undergo changes: "Currently, digital intelligence technology is reshaping the entire chain of museum services. The changes it brings are not local embellishments, but go deep into the business core of protection, management, display, and dissemination."
From this "Expo", this change is particularly prominent. The exhibition has a dedicated museum digital exhibition area to showcase the outstanding achievements in the intelligent construction of museums across the country. It focuses on demonstrating the application of AI in product management, cultural relic restoration, digital communication, and public service scenarios, and intuitively demonstrates the transformative power of digital technology on the museum industry.
Guan Qiang analyzed that the changes brought by digital intelligence technology to museums are reflected in many aspects. From the perspective of protection methods, from mandatory restoration to equal emphasis on preventive protection and digital protection, cultural relic protection should ensure that risks can be predicted and dangers can be pre-controlled; from the perspective of management methods, management decision-making has moved away from pure empirical judgment, and data has become a new production factor in museum governance; from the perspective of display methods Look, from static display to immersive, interactive, and multi-modal forms, exhibitions no longer simply display cultural relics, but complete meaning construction; from the perspective of communication methods, it is no longer one-way publicity by museums, and the public becomes participants. In 2025, the new media attention of national museums will exceed 800 million people.
He said that facing the "15th Five-Year Plan", the museum industry must promote digital intelligence empowerment throughout the entire process of smart protection, smart management, and smart services. On the protection side, make good use of sensor monitoring to identify and predict disease risks; on the management side, rely on the full-cycle data of the collection to do research and judgment on security, passenger flow, and operation and maintenance; on the service side, implement focused supply and integrate online and offline. In addition, data silos must be broken down, and the scattered data of individual museums must be transformed into industry-interoperable public data to help solve the contradiction between supply and demand that makes it difficult to get a ticket for large museums.
While acknowledging the new technology empowering the industry, Guan Qiang reminded that AI should be steadily promoted in various business scenarios of museums, and risk prevention and control should be done simultaneously: "Adhere to human-centered and AI-assisted, AI will only output the first draft, and professionals will make the final review. Public interaction is strictly limited to the boundaries of the authoritative knowledge base. If it exceeds the scope, it will automatically be transferred to manual work. Ideological control must be firmly in the hands of professionals."
"Technology is iterating very fast nowadays, and the most common mistake museums make is to blindly chase hot spots and lose their own foundation." In his view, museums should not blindly chase hot spots and pile up technology. Digital twins can replicate exhibition halls, AI can generate explanation plans, and virtual experiences can expand perceptions. However, the most fundamental power of a museum comes from the presence of the cultural relics themselves and from the professional judgment of the researchers.
Guan Qiang pointed out that all technical solutions in the museum must be subject to the priority principle of cultural relics protection. “The yardstick for judging whether it is good or bad is whether it is conducive to the protection of cultural relics and whether it helps the public understand Chinese civilization.”
