An introduction to AI:
This section contains a range of introductory resources to assist historians with understanding how the rise of GenAI can, and will, impact their research. Intended for academic and professional historians, especially those with an inclination towards pre-1950 historical records, the following videos, podcasts, readings and examples provide a pathway to using, or rejecting, GenAI for your research.
GenAI is very attractive to researchers with the ability to supposedly process large amounts of information in a shorter time frame. While I acknowledge these gains, I urge every researcher to carefully consider the privacy, security and storage policies for the GenAI apps that they are going to upload information to. Australia’s Federal government is only now in the process of establishing firm guidelines for data usage in relation to GenAI. Even then, such rulings only focus on contemporary copyright, and not the ethics of using information of the dead.
This material was added to on 27 October 2025. Material will be added as it is located.
Deborah Lee-Talbot
Historian
Cole Stryker and Eda Kavlakoglu, ‘What is artificial intelligence (AI)?’, IBM, 2025, https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/artificial-intelligence
Kim Martineau,’ What is generative AI?’, IBM, 20 April 2023, https://research.ibm.com/blog/what-is-generative-AI
https://www.crossml.com/ways-genai-transforms-ocr-technology/ OCR and Gen-AI: A brief introduction 2025
Image caption: the Specialised Domains of AI. Source: State Government of New South Wales, 2025.
Books:
Crawford, K., ‘Atlas of AI’, Yale University Press, London, 2021.
Archives, Access and Artificial Intelligence: Working with Born-Digital and Digitised Archival Collections, Digitial Humanities Research, Lise Jaillant (ed.), Bielfeld University Press, 2022: https://www.transcript-publishing.com/978-3-8376-5584-1/archives-access-and-artificial-intelligence/
Bender, E., and Alex Hanna, ‘The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create a Future We Want ’, Harper Collins, 2025.
Hao, K., ‘Empire of AI’, Penguin, 2025.
Podcasts:
ABC Pacific, Culture Compass, ‘Is artificial intelligence the new colonialism? Pacific communities confront a digital future’, Tuesday 14 October 2025, https://www.abc.net.au/pacific/programs/culture-compass/culture-compass/105885110
AI Unravelled: Your Daily Briefing on the Real World Business Impact of AI. Producer Etienne Noumen. Episode S2E14: AI Tech Daily News Rundown: Open AI and Anthropic reveal how millions use AI, is a highlight for choosing the best AI for a project based on user requirements.
Me, myself and AI, MIT Sloan Management Review. The episode S12E2: Protection, Provenance and Prompts with YouTubes Angela Nakalembe is a highlight.
Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna. The episode 20: Let’s Do the Time Warp! (to the “Founding” of “Artificial Intelligence”), November 6 2023 is a good overview and orientation.
Reports:
Australian Government, Our Gen AI: Implications for Work and Skills, Final Overarching Report, Jobs and Skills Australia, 14 August 2025.
National Artificial Intelligence Centre, Voluntary AI Safety Standard, Department of Industry, Science and Resources, August 2024.
Australia’s AI and Ethics Principles, Department of Industry, Science and Resources, 2025, https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/australias-artificial-intelligence-ethics-principles/australias-ai-ethics-principles
UNESCO, Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Adopted 23 November 2021, France, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000385082
Print and online articles, professional, and academic blogs:
The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), https://www.dair-institute.org. We are an interdisciplinary and globally distributed AI research institute rooted in the belief that AI is not inevitable, its harms are preventable, and when its production and deployment include diverse perspectives and deliberate processes it can be beneficial. Our research reflects our lived experiences and centres our communities.
Casey Fiesler: AI ethics w/ Professor Casey: https://caseyfiesler.com/ai-ethics/
Agostinho, D. (2019). Archival encounters: rethinking access and care in digital colonial archives. Archival Science: International Journal on Recorded Information, 19(2), 141–165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-019-09312-0
Rowena Rodrigues, ‘Legal and human rights issues of AI: Gap challenges and vulnerabilities’, Journal of Responsible Technology, Vol. 4, December 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrt.2020.100005
Chrissy Sexton, ‘AI struggles to understand human history and fails miserably when tested, Earth.com, 9 Feb 2022.
Lindsey Passenger Wieck, ‘Revising Historical Writing Using Generative AI: An Editorial Experiment’, Perspectives On History, 15 August 2023
Lise Jaillant and Arran Rees, ‘Applying AI to digital archives: trust, collaboration and shared professional ethics’, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2023, 38, 571–585, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqac073
A-M Sichani, ‘Data is never raw. Ethics and biases in digital cultural heritage collections,’ Anna-Maria Sichani, 2023, <https://amsichani.github.io/posts/data-is-never-raw>.
Moira Donovan, ‘How AI is helping historians better understand our past’, MIT Technology Review, April 11 2023, https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/11/1071104/ai-helping-historians-analyze-past/.
Dr Victoria Grace Walden & Dr Kate Marrison, Recommendations for Using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Holocaust Memory and Education, The Digital Holocaust Memory Project Sussex Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies, 2023.
George Mavridis, ‘Vienna uses AI to bring the past closer to its museums via the UnArtificial Art campaign’, 4imag, 9 June 2023: https://4imag.com/vienna-uses-ai-to-bring-the-public-closer-to-its-museums/.
Yujie Sun & Zihan Zhou, ‘AI hallucination: towards a comprehensive classification of distorted information in artificial intelligence-generated content’, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Vol. 11, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03811-x.
Lauren M. E. Goodlad & Matthew Stone, ‘Beyond Chatbot-K: On Large Language Models, “Generative AI,”and Rise of Chatbots- An Introduction’, critical AI, April 01 2024, https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-11205147.
Natalie Jester (2025) Encountering Virtual Veterans: AI chatbots, martial ontologies, and memories of war, Critical Military Studies, 11:1, 104-108, DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2024.2417622
Jason Edward Lewis, Hēmi Whaanga, Ceyda Yolgörmez, ‘Abundant intelligences: placing AI within Indigenous knowledge frameworks’, 19 October 2024, AI & Society, vol. 40, 2025, 2141-2157, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-02099-4.
Arnold, J., Martin Lupold, Lorenz Theilkas, Lambert Kansy, ‘White paper Machine learning in the archive: depth indexing in the service of access to archives’, Verein Schweizerischer Archivar, June 2024.
Jones, M. and Rebe Taylor, 2024, ‘Beyond access: (re)designing archival guides for changing landscapes’, Archival Science, 24, (2024), 143-166, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-024-09441-1
McLean, Mark A., David Andrew Roberts & Martin Gibbs (2024) ‘Ghosts and the machine: testing the use of Artificial Intelligence to deliver historical life course biographies from big data’, Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 57:3, 146-162, DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2024.2398455
Digital Transformation Agency, ‘Australia’s Artificial Intelligence Ethics Principles’, https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/australias-artificial-intelligence-ethics-principles/australias-ai-ethics-principles, 11 October 2024.
Terras, Melissa, ‘Chapter 7: Inviting AI into the Archives: The Reception of Handwritten Recognition Technology into Historical Manuscript Transcription’, in Lise Jaillant (ed.)
Kelly Breemen and Vicky Breemen, ‘Slow libraries’ and ‘Cultural AI’: Reassessing technology regulation in the context of digitised cultural heritage data, Technology and Regulation, 2025, 175-193 • 10.71265/fxkhy005
Perera, M., Rajith Vidanaarachchi, Sangeetha Chandrashekeran, Melissa Kennedy, Brendan Kennedy, and Saman Halgamuge, ‘Indigenous peoples and artificial intelligence: a systematic review and future directions’, Big Data Society, April-June (2025), 1-22, DOI: 10.1177/20539517251349170.
Video Recordings
UK Royal Historical Society, ‘AI, History and Historians’, https://royalhistsoc.org/recordings-of-ai-history-and-historians-event-now-available/ 23 July 2024, Topics included the use of AI in university assessments, detecting and mitigating dataset biases, environmental impacts of generative AI, and challenges for historians around using AI as the latest new technology to bring change to research and teaching practices.
Dr Marnee Hughes-Warrington, Artificial Historians, Queen’s University, Nugent Lecture, 2024-2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijbjpcWAKKs, Abstract: We can no longer assume that all historians are human. Machine technologies have been making histories for a while now, yet there is a significant gap in understanding what this might mean for the idea of history now, and in future. Looking to current examples of how artificial historians fail and learn, Marnie Hughes-Warrington will explore current and future worlds in which artificial historians are rejected, or cross paths with humans and win prizes for their works or take us to new ways of making histories. No background in theory of history or artificial intelligence is needed to enjoy this lecture.
David McCorkle, Úsing Artificial Intelligence Tools for Historical Map Research, YouTube, 19 Nov 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ndAII4R38
Examples:
Avatars and chatbots:
Charlie the Virtual Veteran, State Library of Queensland
State Library of Queensland, ‘Virtual Veterans at the State Library,’ State Library of Queensland, 2024, <https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/virtual-veterans-state-library
E Gillespie and J Nicholas, ‘Queensland’s state library launched an AI war veteran chatbot. Pranksters immediately tried to break it,’ The Guardian Australia, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/24/queensland-state-library-ai-war-veteran-chatbot-charlie
‘How tech-savvy jokers turned an education ANZAC chatbot into Doctor Who’, Canberra Times, 2024, <https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8605740/pranksters-jailbreak-queensland-state-library-ai-veteran-chatbot/>.
State Library of Queensland, ‘About the VALA Award: State Library of Queensland - Virtual Veterans Explore World War 1 Experiences,’ State Library of Queensland 2024
State Library of Queensland, ‘Virtual Veterans: FAQ,’ 2024, <https://www.anzacsquare.qld.gov.au/virtual-veterans-frequently-asked-questions>.
Transcribing Digitised Handwritten Material:
‘K, Nockles, et.al, ‘Understanding the application of handwritten text recognition technology in heritage contexts: a systematic review of Transkribus in published research.’ Archival Science, vol 22, Issue 3, 2022, 367-392, 10.1007/s10502-022-09397-0.
Asa Letourneau, ‘Marking cursive comfortable’, Public Records Office of Victoria, 2025, https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/making-cursive-comfortable.
Guenter Muehlberger, et. Al,’ Transforming scholarship in the archives through handwritten text recognition: Transkribus as a case study’, Journal of Documentation, vol 75, no 5, 2019, 954-976, https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2018-0114.
The new LLM Apertus: refers to both a recently launched, fully open-source, transparent, and multilingual large language model (LLM) and a related project for open-source cinema hardware. Apparently it's the only "ethical" LLM; 'its distinctive feature: the entire development process, including its architecture, model weights, and training data and recipes, is openly accessible and fully documented'.
Transparency statement:
If you are using GenAI, or you are drawing on the GenAI processed work of a Gallery, Library, Archive, Museum, or a Record-keeping organisations, please consider attaching a transparency statement to your work. This will allow others to recognise the additional layer of mediation applied to these historical records and the technology used.
For example: These images were processed using Transkribus SuperModel Titan II on 9 September 2025. The corresponding output was adapted by Archive staff to reflect the handwritten document to replicate page structure and content. There may be spelling errors due to visual limitations that come from using handwritten digitised material. The primary sources are available for viewing by appointment at the Archive.
Deborah Lee-Talbot
27 October 2025
