Museums are being asked to make decisions about AI and take on new roles and practices at a moment when both the technologies themselves and the social expectations surrounding them are evolving rapidly. This session shares the synopsis of the Museums and AI convening funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in spring 2026, which brought together museum professionals, technologists, educators, researchers, and institutional leaders to reflect on the current state of AI in the museum field, imagine possible futures, and identify what support museums need in order to engage with AI responsibly and effectively.
Drawing from facilitated discussions, scenario-building exercises, and thematic synthesis conducted after the convening, this session presents what museum professionals currently see as the most promising and most likely trajectories for AI adoption in museums, as well as concerns and ethical issues. Rather than framing AI as either an inevitable solution or an existential threat, the session examines the nuanced perspectives that emerged across the convening.
One theme that emerged was exploring AI use for internal workflow efficiency, particularly where these tools could help address museums’ chronic capacity limitations, in contrast to visitor-facing AI experiences, with concerns about the trust the public has in Museums, hallucinations and misinformation, intellectual property, transparency, and the potential erosion of human interpretation and expertise. The convening also revealed significant concerns about uneven institutional capacity across the field. Leaders raised the issue that AI adoption could widen existing inequities between large, well-resourced museums and smaller institutions lacking staffing, technical expertise, policy guidance, or experimentation capacity.
Many other themes arose, including AI policies, ethical use, improvements to accessibility, environmental concerns, use of Open Access and other content as AI training sets, complexities in working with AI vendors, AI literacy in the public and in museum staff, rapidly changing legal implications, leadership skills necessary for meeting the moment, and how funders can best understand and support museums in this moment.
Finally, participants identified significant needs for shared field-wide support, including ethical frameworks, implementation guidance, professional development, peer-learning networks, and stronger forms of AI literacy grounded in museum contexts and values.
Rather than focusing on what AI is, specific tools, or individual implementations, this session offers attendees a high-level synopsis of how museums across the field are currently thinking about AI, unpacking these themes to document where major tensions and opportunities are emerging, where there was consensus, and when viewpoints differed, and how institutions can approach AI adoption in ways that align with mission, public trust, equity, and long-term institutional values.
