AI-MUSE — Venice
Reading the page is solved.
Publishing it isn't.
AI-assisted, curator-approved multilingual content for cultural institutions — on infrastructure they control.
The problem
Multilingual content is where a small institution's budget goes.
Catalogue records, wall labels, guide texts, audio guides — written by hand, translated by agencies, updated rarely. And the archive that would feed them stays untranscribed, because transcription costs more than the content is worth.
What we actually do
Recognition is mature. The chain after it isn't.
Excellent European tools already read historical hands. But a transcription is not a catalogue record, not a label, not a guide in five languages — and that chain is still entirely manual.
AI-MUSE is that chain.
The workflow
- 01
- IngestIIIF or METS. Images never leave the institution.
- 02
- RecogniseModels fine-tuned on the collection's own hand.
- 03
- DraftRecords, labels, guide text — proposed.
- 04
- A curator approvesEvery line, before anything is published.
- 05
- TranslateFrom the approved text, never from raw output.
- 06
- PublishALTO, METS, TEI, Dublin Core, EDM.
Why on-premise
For many archives it is the only lawful option.
Uncatalogued material often cannot be uploaded to a third-party service — depositor agreements, licensing, confidentiality.
The models trained on your collection stay with you, and keep working after the project ends. Processing happens within the European Economic Area, on open-source models, on European compute.
Pilot institutions
We are looking for collections to work with.
Archives, libraries, foundations and museums with text-bearing material. A pilot means selected items, a curator who approves the output, and honest feedback. No cost, no exclusivity.
Behind it
AI-MUSE is a startup by ELAN42 — E42 S.r.l., a digital agency in Venice working on AI, cultural heritage and European infrastructure.
Selected for Step 2 of the CR.EU.IN. HERITAGE Cultural Heritage Innovation
Grants — 16 proposals out of 302.
Step 2 is under preparation. The project is not yet
funded.