By: Jaime Solano – CEO of GVAM
A few weeks ago, a manager from a well-known museum in Spain told me that they had started asking their suppliers to provide proof that they were not using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their digital products. He had received such a flood of visionary proposals that he no longer wanted to waste time reviewing unfeasible ideas.
Beyond ignoring this unstoppable paradigm shift, those of us in cultural management are concerned that AI may threaten the distinctive identity of our projects—an identity that has been built over many years and with great effort. A brand image that, in the case of museums, is based on the exclusivity of their content and collections, and in the case of cities and monuments, on the recognition of their heritage assets.
At GVAM, we believe the best way to approach this change is with optimism, but by building from within. That’s why we’ve launched three innovation projects to develop a new generation of visitor guides powered by AI. The goal is to create a set of solutions grounded in key principles: preserving the identity of each heritage asset, respecting copyright, using visitor behavior data safely, avoiding hidden costs or data sharing with third parties, and working closely with cultural managers to adapt AI to culture and tourism—not the other way around.
On one hand, GVAM is participating—alongside the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the company Indeep AI—in the European project ASSIST, part of the Pathfinder initiative (ASTOUND https://blogs.upm.es/astound/). This project aims to develop conversational AI models tailored to museums, integrating visual recognition features and enriching cultural interpretation with contextual information.
On another front, GVAM is leading the ELSTER project within Spain’s Última Milla innovation program by the State Secretariat for Tourism. Together with other Spanish companies and universities, we are developing a new model of smart guides for museums and tourist destinations. These models are based on previously collected user behavior data to generate user profiles and recommendations, dynamically create content using AI, and expand the solution to other front-end devices such as websites, kiosks, and ticketing systems for museums and heritage sites.
Finally, we are also part of the European project REEVALUATE (https://reevaluate.eu/), where we are working with partners from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Greece to develop collaborative digitization systems for cultural assets using AI.
Through these projects, in 2025, we will carry out various workshops in museums, surveys with experts and visitors, prototype testing, and other field trials. We will do this with the support of our clients and the visitors to the museums, monuments, and destinations we work with.
I can confidently say that the transformation driven by AI is unstoppable, and the sustainability of the core goals of cultural and tourism institutions will depend on how we define our relationship with this technology. At GVAM, we believe every transformation begins with recognizing the core values of what is being transformed. We must harness the knowledge and experience accumulated over the years in the country’s leading museums and heritage sites so that this journey can be exciting, fruitful, and responsible.
Would you like to be part of this adventure? Fill out our survey below and you’ll get early access to the results and a chance to participate in prototype testing.
