HANGZHOU, April 25 (Xinhua) -- At the Liangzhu Museum, Gehane Nabil, director of the Grand Egyptian Museum Learning Center, adjusted her AR glasses as 5,000-year-old artifacts from China's Neolithic Liangzhu Culture came to life before her eyes.

Nabil was among more than 190 museum curators, experts and cultural leaders from over 60 countries and regions to gather for the third UNESCO High-Level Forum for Museums held from Wednesday to Friday in east China's tech hub of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province.

The three-day event aims to amplify the role museums play in addressing global challenges and fostering inclusive societies. During the event, participants explored how AI is revolutionizing museums, as well as opportunities and challenges of AI integration.

AI is emerging as a transformative tool in museum collection management, offering solutions for cataloging and conservation. Britt Romstad, executive director of Audience and Engagement under the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI), said that ACMI is developing AI tools to make its collections more accessible and discoverable for researchers and people interested in these collections.

"AI can detect damages in old museum buildings or damages invisible in old artifacts. But human proofreading of the outputs remains important in the era of AI," said Gabor Zsigmond, director general of the Hungarian National Museum.

"Once we have the data, the museum is able to analyze the data depot, and to rate the content, whether it's programmed special exhibitions or even permanent galleries, and try to customize it to the individual preferences," said May Khuen Chung, director of the National Museum of Singapore.

"AI helps plan exhibitions. We're working with Hangzhou's tech firms on digital exhibitions. Given a theme, requirements and product options, AI can select exhibits and build an exhibition framework using the existing text content," said Zhao Feng, dean of the School of Art and Archaeology at Zhejiang University.

While embracing the benefits of AI, participants also shared their concerns over related challenges. In an interview, Romstad told Xinhua that copyright issues, the ethics of AI, and what AI means for creativity and the ownership of artwork should be considered as well.

"It's been hard to be focused on the future of AI because the advances are happening so quickly," Romstad said. She also noted that technology is a common language, and that it "opens up possibilities of collaboration in a way that's quite exciting."

"There's a lot of work that we need to do to be able to build more equity into that kind of digital space," she added.

Participants also discussed the relationship between AI and human roles. "Research and original work are not that easy. The output of AI needs expert judgment and review," Zhao said.

The forum's conclusions will be submitted to the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, scheduled to take place in September in Spain.

During a cultural excursion to the Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site that bears testimony to the existence of the Chinese civilization for at least 5,000 years, Chung told Xinhua that Chinese museums offer valuable lessons, particularly on the use of technology and cultural relics to narrate the history of regions and countries.

"I'm so interested in prehistory and also those stone tools, because there are similar narratives about the social practice between the two populations of China and Egypt," Nabil said. "We realize that we have many things in common, and these are what eventually will unite human beings together." ■