Digital Snapshot | 8.04.2025

Hello, hello. I'd like to start with a correction on last month's issue, along with an apology. Last month I highlighted an excellent reporting dashboard to track traffic from ChatGPT in GA4. Unfortunately, I got both the name of the person who created it, and the organisation that she works for, incorrect. So it should have read as follows:

Nazma Noor, of Cog Design, has created a reporting dashboard that anyone with a Google Analytics 4 account can use to see how much traffic you're getting from ChatGPT. I've noticed ChatGPT popping up in client GA4 accounts of late, so definitely one to keep an eye on. 

Apologies to Nazma for getting that one wrong.

In this month's issue we've got cyber attacks, AI civilisations (in Minecraft, they're not taking over the world just yet), ad-free meta and much more. 

• Late last year, the National Museum of the Royal Navy was hit by a cyber attack. Always worth keeping an eye on these sorts of things as when hackers find vulnerabilities in one kind of organisation, they often see if they can exploit it again in other organisations of the same type.
• Tunbridge Wells Borough Council are transforming the Amelia Scott cultural hub into a 'centre of digital innovation'. Their focus will be on enhancing visitor engagement and collections preservation. But it will have AI at the 'heart of their strategy'. One to keep an eye on.
• Meta is weighing up whether to start charging for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram in the UK. If that happens, there's potential ramifications for the effectiveness of ad-spend on the platforms.
• The 2025 Digital Culture Awards winners have been announced!

• Arts Professional published an interesting article by Susan Oman, a researcher who spent two years embedded within DCMS on a policy fellowship. Susan has written about what a digital strategy for the UK cultural sector might look like.
• A report by Hootsuite has researched the best times to post on the various social media channels in 2025.
• And to add to this, Hootsuite have also researched the average engagement rates for 12 different industries. 'NonProfit', 'Dining, Hospitality, and Tourism', and 'Media and Entertainment' may be the better comparators.
• There were recently some posts shared on the Museum Computer Group's discussion list about a noticeable increase in bot traffic across cultural websites - it appears to be a common trend.

• The UK video games industry is calling for a Digital Creativity GCSE. A wonderful idea, if you ask me.
• Historic Environment Scotland has launched a new website to access its collections, archives, images and information. trove.scot features 1.2 million images from HES's archives (an impressive feat).
• Over 1,000 autonomous AI agents were given free reign to build Minecraft worlds together. They built towns, created small-scale economies, traded with each-other and lived fairly individual lives. Definitely distracting, quite entertaining, more concerning than inspiring.
• There's currently a trend for people to use OpenAI's new image generator to create Studio Ghibli (a Japanese animation studio) inspired images. This raises lots of questions about creative freedom, copyright, intellectual property rights, and ethics.

• The London Museum has been nominated for a Webby Award for 'Best Use of AI', around their use of AI to power content relationships between objects and stories. If you ask me, that's pretty cool. I'm sure they'd appreciate a few extra votes.

And that’s all for this edition.

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You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.