Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly valuable tool in cultural heritage research. From analysing historical documents to supporting digital reconstructions, AI is helping researchers work with growing volumes of data and explore new ways of understanding the past.
Its potential is exciting, but it also raises an important question: when AI contributes to the reconstruction of cultural heritage, where does history end and interpretation begin?
Reconstructing the past is never straightforward
Cultural heritage rarely reaches us in its original state. Buildings are altered over time, artworks deteriorate, and historical records are often incomplete. Historic pipe organs are a good example of this complexity. Many have been modified throughout their lifetime, with pipes replaced, mechanisms updated, and tuning systems adapted to changing musical practices. Even the churches and concert halls where they were built have changed over the centuries, affecting how they sound today.
For researchers, understanding these instruments means bringing together evidence from many different sources. Historical documents, architectural surveys, 3D models, acoustic measurements, musical scores, and expert knowledge all contribute to building a more complete picture, even if some pieces of the puzzle will always remain missing.
How can AI contribute?
Despite the attention surrounding artificial intelligence, its role in cultural heritage is often more practical than people imagine. Rather than recreating the past automatically, AI can help researchers process and connect large and diverse datasets more efficiently.
Depending on the application, AI can assist in linking different types of heritage information, analysing musical performances, recognising patterns in historical data, or supporting the development of AI-based sound synthesis techniques for historic pipe organs and their virtual representations. These capabilities can reduce the time needed for certain tasks and help reveal relationships that may otherwise be difficult to identify.
However, AI can only work with the information that is available. It cannot recover evidence that has been lost or determine with certainty how an object, a building, or a musical instrument originally looked or sounded.
Interpretation still depends on people
Digital reconstructions are often seen as accurate representations of the past, but they are always based on the available evidence and the decisions made during the research process. When historical information is incomplete, experts must evaluate different sources, assess their reliability, and decide how missing information should be represented.
Every digital reconstruction is therefore an interpretation supported by evidence rather than a definitive representation of history.
Artificial intelligence can support these activities by providing new ways to analyse and organise information, but it cannot replace historical knowledge or professional judgement. Historians, conservators, engineers, musicologists, and other specialists remain essential for interpreting the evidence and understanding its historical context.
AI and the future of pipe organ heritage
Research projects across Europe are exploring how AI can complement technologies such as 3D digitisation, acoustic modelling, and immersive visualisation to improve the study and preservation of cultural heritage.
Within MusicSphere, AI is being investigated as one element of a broader digital ecosystem that also includes physical modelling, acoustic analysis, and extended reality technologies. Its role is to support tasks such as integrating different types of heritage data, analysing complex musical performances, and contributing to virtual representations of historic pipe organs for research, education, and public engagement.
Rather than replacing existing methods, these technologies provide researchers with additional tools to better document, study, and share Europe’s rich organ heritage.
Looking ahead
Artificial intelligence is unlikely to remove the uncertainty that is part of historical research, and it will never replace the expertise of the people who study and preserve cultural heritage. Its real value lies in helping researchers work more effectively with complex information and in supporting new ways of documenting, interpreting, and communicating the past.
As these technologies continue to evolve, the challenge will not simply be to develop more advanced AI tools, but to use them responsibly and transparently. In cultural heritage, the goal is not to create a perfect version of history, but to build better-informed interpretations while acknowledging the limits of what we can truly know.
In that sense, AI is not rewriting history. It is helping us explore it in new ways.