Date/Time
Date(s) - Thu 17 April
12:00 - 13:00
Join Te Papa’s Curator History, Dr Katie Cooper, and Collections Data Manager, Gareth Watkins, as they discuss a pilot project exploring the use of Generative AI to create rich, accurate descriptions of collection items.
The project focused on the Silversmith collection within the General History collection. Currently, there are around 900 silversmiths’ and jewellers’ tools that have been photographed but do not have published descriptions. Katie and Gareth will talk about the impact of AI prompt design, the importance of adding contextual information, and the introduction of a human verification workflow to ensure the quality and accuracy of the descriptions.
In the session, Gareth Watkins will introduce a personal experiment that explored how Te Papa’s collection data (via its public API) could be integrated with ChatGPT to create a more conversational way of interacting with the collections. In the session, Gareth will walk through the process of taking a user’s query, using ChatGPT to optimise the search, and shaping the results from Te Papa into a real-time conversation. Along the way, Gareth will discuss some of the challenges and opportunities that real-time Generative AI presents.
Katie Cooper
Dr Katie Cooper is one of the curators in the New Zealand Histories and Cultures team at Te Papa. Her role is to develop the history collections and share stories with as many different audiences as possible, utilising a range of research and communication tools.
Gareth Watkins
Gareth Watkins is the Collections Data Manager at Te Papa, where he works with teams to ensure the museum’s collections data is accessible, accurate, and aligned with international standards. He has been involved in several AI experiments aimed at increasing the discoverability and accessibility of the national collections.