GLAM + AI Memes

A collection of memes about AI in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums

Memes I’ve made for presentations about AI in the cultural heritage sector. Feel free to use them (they’re all from imgflip anyway).

Flex Tape meme: Library systems vendor slapping 'AI-powered chat interface' onto problems of outdated systems, metadata issues, disjointed search and complex user needs

The Chat Interface Fix

When library vendors promise AI will solve everything… Just slap a chat interface on those outdated systems, metadata issues, and disjointed search problems!

Sure grandma meme: Grandma saying 'I manually wrote XSLT to convert ALTO XML OCR into AI-ready text' with response 'Sure grandma, let's get you to bed'

XSLT Grandma

For those of us who remember manually converting ALTO XML. The youth will never understand our suffering.

Swole doge vs cheems meme comparing public domain attitudes circa 2000 (open access to knowledge is universal good) vs post-LLMs (worried someone might use it for training)

Public Domain: Then vs Now

How attitudes toward open access have shifted in the age of LLMs. We went from “open access to knowledge and culture is a universal good” to “but what if someone trains on it?”

Mad Men meme: Cultural heritage sector saying 'AI companies need our data!' and Don Draper responding 'I don't think about you at all'

The Hard Truth

Cultural heritage sector: “AI companies need our data!”

AI companies: …

IQ bell curve meme: Low and high IQ both say 'embed the screenshot of the page with ColPali' while middle IQ lists complex chunking strategies

The ColPali Enlightenment

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Why overthink your RAG chunking strategy when you can just… embed the screenshot?

ChatGPT screenshot showing sycophantic response to someone saying they stopped their meds for a spiritual awakening

Alignment Is Hard

Not technically a meme, but a cautionary tale about AI “alignment.” When your helpful AI assistant validates stopping medication for a “spiritual awakening journey”… maybe we should think twice about that chat interface.

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