Hello and welcome to the Digital Snapshot, bringing you all the latest digital news, inspiration, tips and guidance for the arts, culture, museums and heritage world.
I've just come back from a lovely holiday in Menorca. I returned to peak British summer time; 15 degrees with rain and strong winds. It's good to be home.
Lots of stuff to sink your teeth into in this month's issue. The latest news (announced just yesterday), is that Apple and OpenAI have formed a partnership to bring ChatGPT to Apple devices. More on that below. The response has been varied, mostly cool - with Apple's share prices falling by nearly 2% on the day of the announcement. Musk, on the other hand, has said that he will ban iPhones from his companies due to "data security". I'm sure that it has nothing to do with him owning a rival AI tool.
📰 Latest news
- Hot off the press, OpenAI and Apple have announced a partnership to integrate ChatGPT into Apple devices. This is a pretty big deal, making AI tools significantly more accessible for a much broader audience. Whether it's a good thing or not, I'm not quite so sure.
- There was a recent documentation leak around Google Search which has provided an unprecedented look at Google's closely guarded search rankings system. Search Engine Land has created a comprehensive overview of the leak, with some useful key learnings for your SEO work.
- The Museums in the Metaverse project will create a two-sided Extended Reality (XR) cultural heritage platform, aiming to empower visitors to explore cultural assets in virtual XR worlds.
- Google is adding Augmented Reality content to Google Maps in Paris and Singapore. Expect it to be rolled out to other locations soon.
🤓 Useful / shareable
- This is a little more information about Google's experimentation with AI within search. It mostly suggests that the search engine will likely look to keep people within its walled garden, using AI to generate answers to searches rather than linking out to other sites. This is a great look at why that might not be a good thing.
- The Content Mavericks podcast has a great interview with the Comms Director at Opera Rara, who have been having great success with their content on YouTube.
- Here's a great interview with the Royal Institution's Steven Franklin, focusing on their data driven approach to social media.
- Here's a link to an in-depth discussion on QR code usage, with a number of responders sharing data/insights on how QR codes are used within their organisations.
- An interesting paper by academics at the School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering at the University of Brighton on the use of low-power Machine Learning for visitor engagement (with a focus on museums). This is a slightly long one and a touch academic, but it's still a useful read.
💥 Distracting / entertaining / inspiring
- Playbrary is a fantastic concept, using AI to turn over one thousand popular books into choose your own adventure style stories. It's by the National Library Board of Singapore and LePub and it's great fun. Hat tip to Chris Unitt for sharing in his Cultural Digital newsletter.
- Tech Crunch has been publishing an inspiring series, highlighting women working in the field of AI.
- This is a great case study with The Old Vic, looking at their OLD VIC: IN CAMERA live-streamed performance series from mid-2020. It was created in response to the Pandemic, of course, but lots of useful learnings.
- If you struggle with image prompting, (creating AI generated images using written prompts), this useful tool from Google Arts & Culture will help you to develop that skill. Definitely distracting, but also useful.
👍 Something good
- This is a little old, but still good. In 2023, May Naidoo set out to visit all 43 artworks featured in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons video game, in real life.
- There's still time to book a ticket for the AMA Conference in Brighton on 3 - 5 July. Lots of great sessions and it's a beautiful city - win, win.
And that’s all for this edition.
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You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.
