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The Rijksmuseum and technology investor Prosus are working together for three years to make art and history more accessible to a broad audience with AI. Since October 2026, AI specialists from Prosus’s AI Talent Lab have been working full-time in the museum’s Innovation Lab. The teams will first map out goals, data and possible applications; which concrete applications will follow is not yet known.

AI4LAM’s international Fantastic Futures conference is coming to the Rijksmuseum in 2027, in collaboration with Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed and the Nederlandse AI Coalitie. In an interview published by Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed, Saskia Scheltjens, head of Research Services at the museum, advocates a critical yet constructive approach to AI. She emphasises that AI policy concerns not only collections, but also security, building management and communication.

Raad voor Cultuur says the advisory report Kunstzinnig boven kunstmatig has been widely discussed in the media, at sector events and during the Paradisodebat since its publication in June. An English-language edition is intended to advance the European debate; in the coming months, the council will take part in events including Dutch Design Week, Amsterdam Dance Event and Music Next.

DEN describes how AI makes phishing and other cyberattacks more convincing, faster and more accessible to attackers. At the same time, AI can help detect vulnerabilities and suspicious patterns earlier. The institute advises museums, libraries and other cultural organisations to update their existing security, raise staff awareness and draw up an incident response and recovery plan.

At an international meeting in Maastricht, the Omeka S community discussed the growing role of AI in building and maintaining modules for digital heritage collections. A new working group will draw up guidelines on using AI for metadata and software development, as well as advice on increasing bot traffic.

From January 2027, SURF will make SURF AI available to members in vocational and higher education. The infrastructure combines an AI hub with the eduGenAI chat application, connects different language models through open standards and allows institutions to decide who can access which models. SURF and Npuls are continuing to develop the service with educational institutions.

SURF will place the Dutch AI Factory’s AI supercomputer at Eurofiber on Groningen’s Zernike Campus in 2027. The infrastructure will be available to education and research, among others, and is expected to be fully operational in early 2028. The data centre reuses almost all residual heat and uses neither surface water nor drinking water for cooling.

Kennisnet has published an AI literacy framework for primary and secondary education. The framework distinguishes the competences of being knowledgeable, critical and creative, and works with basic, advanced and expert levels. According to Kennisnet, it helps schools comply with the AI Act and organise professional development, self-assessment and team sessions on responsible AI use.

Waag Futurelab is part of the editorial team for Paradisodebat, which on 6 September discusses the power and strength of generative AI in the cultural and creative sector. Makers, administrators and politicians, moderated by Rosalie Dielesen, discuss the sector’s position and how to deal with this technology.

Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed explains why archives need to record how AI-assisted policy decisions are made, including the prompt, the output and changes to the model and underlying data. A renewed shared Preservation Watch should monitor and interpret these developments for the heritage sector. The function was recently added to the OAIS model for sustainable digital accessibility.

SURF talks to Silvester Draaijer of the VU Onderwijswerkplaats about AI’s impact on educational innovation. He warns against outsourcing thinking to AI and argues that education and research institutions need to find new teaching responses, from AI literacy to Socratic bots, quizbots, simulations and role-play.

Museumvereniging maintains an up-to-date digitalisation page for museums, with news, tools, in-depth material and a separate AI section. The page points among other things to NEMO’s resource hub on AI, digital transformation and museum futures, alongside material on the digital Museumkaart, cyber resilience, collection data and knowledge meetings for the sector.

DEN discusses new European guidance on labelling AI-generated and AI-modified content. The knowledge institute translates the rules into situations for museums, archives, theatres, festivals and music venues, and advises cultural organisations to record which AI tools they use, how they communicate transparently and who is responsible for publications.

TU Delft reports that the international Horizon Europe project CULTURAI has received a €5 million grant to protect cultural diversity and creative autonomy in the era of generative AI. Over four years, the consortium of universities, research institutes and cultural organisations will lay the foundations for a virtual international competence centre that will support cultural institutions and creators in the responsible use of artificial intelligence from 2030.

Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed announces a two-day course in which heritage organisations learn to develop their own AI policy. The course discusses applications such as manuscript transcription, communication and data analysis, but mainly emphasises ethical dilemmas, social impact, unreliable results and bias in data sets.

The Nederlands Film Festival has selected twelve productions for the Gouden Kalf Competitie Digitale Cultuur 2026. Presented during Storyspace at Bibliotheek Utrecht, the works explore how digital techniques can tell stories beyond film and television. According to the NFF, our relationship with new technologies such as AI is a major theme for many creators, with the interaction between people, technology and meaning as a common thread.

Waag Futurelab has opened the Trust me, I’m an AI/rtist call within the European HAMLET project. Four creative makers or collectives can test, hack and question AI Enablers developed with technologists and dance, theatre and gaming professionals. The interventions focus on the tools’ assumptions, architecture, ethics and sustainability, and should lead to performances or public installations in September 2027.

DEN shows how cultural organisations without a technical background can use vibe coding to create prototypes, such as forms, checklists, dashboards and audience-oriented tools. The step-by-step plan emphasises that teams must first formulate a clear problem, consciously choose AI assistants or specialized platforms, test results as a conversation and have a developer watch before a public tool goes live.

Researchers at De Haagse Hogeschool are developing a method with CHAI with which students and teachers together make concrete agreements about the responsible use of generative AI in higher education. The project translates AI policy, regulations and AI literacy into so-called AI Honor Codes per course or assignment, so that academic integrity, conscious choice and shared responsibility are central.

DEN discusses four ways cultural organisations can use AI to make their programming more accessible for people with a visual or hearing impairment. The article mentions live captioning, audio description and image recognition, with practical examples and attention to the European Accessibility Act.

DEN responds to the AI advice of the Raad voor Cultuur and identifies three challenges for the sector: AI literacy for cultural professionals, a task force that focuses on protection and use, and new revenue models around cultural data. The knowledge institute emphasises that AI is already present in the daily practice of cultural organisations and advocates shared facilities, digital autonomy and more representative AI models based on museum, archive, library and art collections.

The KB is part of an international partnership that has received 5 million euros for the development of a Competence Centre for AI. The centre must help cultural and heritage institutions to apply artificial intelligence responsibly, share knowledge and collaborate better on collections, research and digital infrastructure.

The Raad voor Cultuur advises government and parliament to develop artificial intelligence around public values rather than profit, with the cultural and creative sector as an active co-designer. It calls for measures including a support programme titled ‘Naar een Europese AI-cultuur’, a government commissioner for AI and a civic task force on AI and culture, so that public alternatives, creators’ rights and cultural data carry more weight in AI policy.

SURF is starting the HOSAN project with government, knowledge institutions, media and social partners to develop high-quality and sovereign speech recognition for Dutch. The technology should provide public organisations, including education and research, with reliable automatic transcription, subtitling and voice-activated applications that align with public values and digital autonomy.

Universiteit Leiden reports that the Leiden Declaration, a call from mathematicians for careful and responsible use of AI, has sparked much international debate about science, reliability, authorship and human assessment. The statement received attention in Nature, The New York Times and Scientific American, among others, and now has more than 2,300 signatories, including Robert Dijkgraaf, further broadening the discussion about guidelines for AI use in research and higher education.

The Raad voor Cultuur will present its advice on the influence of artificial intelligence on the cultural and creative sector via a livestream on 29 June. Chairman Kristel Baele explains the advice together with Martijn van der Steen, chairman of the committee of experts that prepared the process; this translates the council's ongoing AI research into concrete recommendations for the sector and policy.

Kennisnet discusses how generative AI can help teachers to more quickly tailor teaching materials to the level, pace, support and interests of students. The article distinguishes between generic AI tools and education-specific applications, but also emphasises preconditions regarding privacy, pedagogical-didactic quality, professional assessment and pilots before schools widely use AI for differentiation.

Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed announces a meeting on the consequences of AI scraping for the heritage sector and the freely accessible digital domain. Beeld & Geluid, the University of Edinburgh and AIxDESIGN bring together colleagues from the creative and heritage sectors for a panel discussion and zine workshop on digital commons in the AI era.

Waag Futurelab invites creators, designers, architects, teachers and policymakers in the Netherlands to share their needs around AI skills for the European RenAIssance project. Their input will inform AI-supported curricula for creative education, a European AI skills strategy and practice-led pilots that strengthen the values and distinctive character of the creative and cultural sectors.

Bnetwerk calls on library professionals and visitors to participate in the ELAN/ADELE Digital & AI Readiness Survey by EBLIDA. The European questionnaire maps how libraries implement digital technologies and artificial intelligence. The results should help with future policy and provide insight into what libraries need to work responsibly with AI.

SURF advises educational and research institutions to remain cautious with Microsoft 365 Copilot. A new update of the DPIA concludes that Microsoft has made improvements, but that not all privacy risks have yet been sufficiently mitigated and institutions must carefully assess use per application.

Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen opens AI-Artist on 15 November 2026, an exhibition exploring the relationship between AI, art and human creativity. Guest curator Edo Dijksterhuis brings together artists who use AI as a tool, approach it critically or embrace it fully, including Ed Atkins, robot artist Ai-Da and Alicia Framis. The exhibition runs until 9 May 2027 inclusive and will be accompanied by a programme of talks and workshops for young people and adults.

DEN and Innovation:Lab are organising the Hackathon AI: from idea to concept on November 4. Cultural organisations explore how they can use AI responsibly and practically, develop their own idea into a concrete concept and receive guidance on opportunities, preconditions and next steps.

Kennisnet describes how generative AI increases cyber risks for schools by making phishing, malware and misuse of AI systems more accessible. The organisation advocates an integrated approach with technical security, awareness, incident response and wise use of AI tools to strengthen the digital resilience of education.

Npuls has launched the AI in de Onderwijspraktijk training course with eduGenAI. A total of 150 people from 49 post-secondary institutions are taking part, with a focus on the pedagogically and didactically responsible use of generative AI. Afterwards, the course materials will be refined and published so that other institutions can use them too.

Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed has announced a study day organised by the meemoo-collegegroep Erfgoed en AI on the opportunities and limits of artificial intelligence for heritage organisations. Projects including MODA, CHAI-T, Glashelder and Cartoons in Context will frame case studies, debates and demonstrations about generative AI, digital collections and knowledge sharing across the sector.

From May, Npuls will make the eduGenAI pilot environment more widely available to post-secondary education. The SURF and Npuls project lets institutions experiment with generative AI in a controlled setting so that students, teachers and support staff can gain experience safely and responsibly.

Kennisnet describes how Unicoz Onderwijsgroep is giving generative AI a place in the organisation. The group based its approach on the Schoolafspraken generatieve AI, adopted organisation-wide AI policy and leaves individual schools room to shape the guidelines in practice for their own educational context.

The Rijksmuseum is launching a campaign in which the whole of the Netherlands becomes a digital studio: visitors can select a work of art, edit it with AI and share the result. The project shows how artificial intelligence can bring classic masterpieces to life in a new way.

AI researcher Eric Piette of UCLouvain used artificial intelligence to identify a mysterious stone from the Thermenmuseum in Heerlen as a Roman blockade-style game dating from AD 200–400. Thousands of AI simulations also helped reconstruct its likely rules.

The Discovery Museum in Kerkrade presents a large-scale interactive AI exhibition (until October 25, 2026). Visitors discover applications such as an AI VJ/DJ experience, race against a robot arm and meet humanoid robot Ami. The exhibition also addresses critical questions about privacy and employment.

The DAF Museum in Eindhoven has extended the exhibition on the role of artificial intelligence in vehicle design until September 30, 2026. The exhibition includes illustrations by Charles Burki from the 1950s and 1960s that have been converted into moving images with AI, and shows what classic DAF models would look like if they were redesigned today with AI.

The Faculty of Humanities at Universiteit Leiden organised a symposium on the role of generative AI in university education. Discussion focused on assessment robustness, unauthorised AI use and the balance between AI’s potential and educational integrity. Vice-Dean Jeroen Touwen argued for experimental research instead of restrictive policies and stressed the need for a shared institutional vision.

International team of scientists, including from TU/e, has developed a revolutionary method (Sparse Evolutionary Training) that accelerates AI algorithms quadratically, making AI available on cheap computers.

The Executive Board of the Universiteit Twente has adopted a statement on artificial intelligence (AI). AI is not a temporary trend, but a fundamental technology that will have a lasting impact on the university and society.

Tom van Woensel is professor and 'AI in Education portfolio lead'. It is his job to direct a transformation that will ensure that AI is seamlessly woven into education at TU/e by 2030.

A showcase of the artists and studios taking part in the Nxt AI Residentie. Powered by Prosus., 13–14 September.

DEN has developed a practical guide that helps theatres, museums, libraries, venues, festivals and other cultural organisations draw up AI policy systematically. The roadmap covers reliability, copyright and portrait rights, sustainability, transparency, diversity, responsibility and the impact on work, among other topics, so organisations can connect AI use with their own vision, values and legal obligations.