Editorial: Artificial intelligence: the new frontier in digital humanities

Abstract

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the humanities represents a transformative shift, offeringnew tools to understand, preserve, and share cultural and historical heritage. While this innovation opensunprecedented avenues for exploration, it also raises questions about the balance between computational efficiency and human-centered interpretation. The current debate, in fact, examines how to maintain equilibrium between automated analysis and the contextual depth characteristic of human understanding, while also addressing the ethical implications of using AI in the study and representation of culture. This special issue delves into these very themes. Each contribution brings forward innovative methodologies, building an interdisciplinary bridge between AI and the humanities. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for AI applications that both respect and enrich the complexity and diversity of cultural heritage. The collection begins with an exploration of human-computer interaction, where Zellou and Holliday examine speech adaptations in voice-activated AI dialogues (Zellou and Holliday, 2024). This research reveals the subtle ways users adjust their communication with AI, enhancing our understanding of social dynamics in human-computer interaction. Their work resonates with Chun’s research on MultiSentimentArcs (Chun, 2024), a multimodal sentiment analysis framework that applies AI to emotional narratives in media.Together, these studies highlight AI’s role in capturing social and emotional nuances, offering insightsinto how technology can interact empathetically with users. Elkins’ work on translation evaluation buildson this theme, examining how AI can help retain the emotional and stylistic depth of literary texts acrosslanguages (Elkins, 2024). By employing advanced language models, Elkins demonstrates how AI preservesthe fidelity of cross-cultural texts, contributing to the broader discourse on AI in cultural preservation.This exploration of cross-cultural fidelity finds a parallel in Stacchio et al.’s work, where a framework forneural rendering is proposed to ensure ethical handling of digital cultural assets. Their research emphasizes transparency and ethical responsibility, aligning AI practices with established guidelines in cultural heritage preservation (Stacchio et al., 2024). The theme of ethical AI applications continues in Mehra et al.’s study on the final verbal expressions of death row inmates, which applies computational psycholinguistics to analyze themes of spirituality, forgiveness, and emotional consistency. By capturing profound aspects of human psychology, this study illustrates AI’s potential to enhance our understanding of sensitive, high-stakes contexts, supporting fields like criminology and psychology in ethically resonant ways (Mehra et al., 2024). Santini’s work complements these themes through its focus on knowledge extraction from Italian TEI-encoded texts. This study leverages language models to create knowledge graphs that preserve and contextualize historical texts, contributing to digital humanities by enhancing the accessibility and coherence of cultural content. The methodology emphasizes both structured and machine-readable data, bridging gaps between technology and the humanistic study of texts (Santini, 2024). Morotti and colleagues add to the discourse on AI’s role in cultural preservation with their innovative DIP-ST method for artwork restoration. This study combines Deep Image Prior with Style Transfer to reconstruct damaged artwork areas, maintaining stylistic fidelity without requiring large datasets. Their approach highlights AI’s potential in contexts where data scarcity and artistic coherence are crucial, underscoring the need for tools that adapt to humanities research with minimal intrusion (Morotti et al., 2024). Collectively, these contributions underscore AI’s transformative potential across the humanities, from human-computer interaction to cultural preservation. This issue advocates for a balanced approach to AI in humanities, one that marries technical advancement with ethical consideration and interpretive respect. As AI continues to shape how we interact with, preserve, and interpret cultural heritage, this research provides a foundation for an AI-enhanced future that respects the depth, complexity, and humanity of its subjects.

Ähnliche Arbeiten