Heritage Futures
The Woven Code: Ethical AI, Social Reproduction, and the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage
Anita Greenhill
University of Manchester
- Date
- Time
- -
- Room
- A22
- Format
- Paper
- Chair
- Xunnan Li
Presentation abstract
Abstract
The rapid integration of artificial intelligence into cultural production presents both unprecedented opportunities and significant ethical challenges for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. While AI offers new possibilities for documenting, translating and reimagining oral traditions, it also risks transforming culturally situated knowledge into decontextualised datasets subject to extraction, platformisation and algorithmic appropriation. This paper examines these tensions through The Princess and the Serpent a collaborative digital storytelling project developed with storytellers, musicians and creative practitioners from Senegal and The Gambia that explores how West African oral narratives can be responsibly translated into AI-assisted digital media.
Drawing upon the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and theories of social reproduction, the paper argues that oral storytelling should be understood not simply as cultural representation but as the ongoing labour through which communities reproduce collective memory, cultural identity, ecological knowledge and intergenerational relationships. Rather than treating oral narratives as repositories of data, the project conceptualises heritage as a living, evolving social practice whose meaning emerges through performance, interpretation and communal participation.
Using a participatory, practice-based research methodology, the paper proposes an ethical architecture for AI-mediated heritage founded upon four interdependent principles: collective consent, data sovereignty, equitable benefit-sharing and provenance-sensitive attribution. Together these principles redistribute narrative authority across the wider ecosystem of storytellers, translators, artists and community custodians while resisting forms of epistemic injustice associated with data colonialism and invisible digital labour.
The paper contributes to emerging debates on ethical AI by demonstrating how community-governed digital infrastructures can support, rather than replace, living heritage traditions. It argues that safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in the age of AI requires structural models of governance that embed cultural authority within the communities from which knowledge originates, ensuring that technological innovation strengthens rather than extracts the social and cultural value of oral tradition.
Meet the presenter
About the presenter
Anita Greenhill
Dr Anita Greenhill is a Senior Lecturer at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, whose research explores how digital technologies are transforming work, creativity, communities, and culture. Her interdisciplinary research spans digital labour, artificial intelligence, immersive technologies, the creative industries, esports, and digital heritage. Anita has published extensively on technology and society and has led research with academic, industry, and public sector partners. Her work combines qualitative research with co-production to examine how emerging technologies can create social, cultural, and economic value. She is a member of Digital Futures (Createch) and is actively developing research on AI-enabled storytelling, digital creativity, and the future of the music and creative industries, building collaborations that connect universities, industry, policymakers, and cultural organisations.