Digital Cultural Heritage in the Age of Data and AI: Trends, Challenges and Futures

Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) has developed a great deal beyond the initial idea of digitising cultural heritage objects, to become a highly complex and dynamic socio-technical ecosystem today. Beginning with preservation and access, DCH has now added sophisticated data infrastructures, smart systems and democratic structures that continually reinvent the ways in which cultural knowledge is created and engaged. This paper seeks to explore the current process of transformation of digital cultural heritage, with a specific focus on how artificial intelligence, all things data, immersive technologies and user participation are re-imagining the very nature of heritage practices. The research shows that new technologies like artificial intelligence, extended reality and digital twins are moving the experience of heritage from passive viewing to active participation, by providing more interactive and immersive interaction with cultural assets. Simultaneously, it examines the epistemological transition from object-based approaches to heritage to networked, process and co-created knowledge systems, where knowledge is produced through institutional, technological and community interactions. To highlight this shift, the paper offers a conceptual case of Nikola Tesla's legacy, a story that can be reimagined as a cooperative, interactive system in a digital space as opposed to a static archive. The legacy of Tesla is a powerful case study on how digital heritage can be used to interpret, engage, and continually re-imagine cultural narratives. The paper provides a synthesis on the nature of digital cultural heritage and concludes that it is becoming an intelligent, data-driven, participatory field which makes cultural heritage more accessible, engaging, and even changes the way cultural knowledge is produced and governed in the digital era.