King's College London

 

This project examines how public media and knowledge institutions with a public or commons remit navigate the ecological, cultural and governance responsibilities that accompany AI systems. It asks what it means to steward creative labour and public trust as AI rapidly reshapes cultural production, and whether institutions can develop governance grounded not only in innovation and efficiency, but also in care, accountability, and public value.

Working with Wikimedia UK and the BBC (Labs, BBC R&D), the project explores how organisations negotiate questions of environmental impact, data governance, and cultural custodianship in decisions about AI. It pays particular attention to the tensions that emerge when commitments to public value encounter platform logics, extractive data infrastructures and the changing conditions of creative labour.

Bringing these perspectives into conversation across institutions, the project seeks to develop a richer account of AI stewardship: one that moves beyond responsible adoption or technical governance to consider how institutions might care for the people, knowledge, cultural resources and environments implicated in AI. In doing so, it asks what forms of institutional responsibility are needed to sustain public value in an increasingly AI-mediated cultural landscape.

The project is guided by three core questions:

1. How do UK digital commons and cultural/public service institutions currently frame their custodial responsibilities toward creative labour and public value in the context of AI?
2. What implicit imaginaries of care, obligation, and protection underpin these framings?
3. What alternative models of custodianship emerge when practitioners co-design future governance possibilities beyond predictive/commercial logics?