AI could bridge the gap between artworks and their historical context

The relationship between time and culture is usually considered in material terms—restoring films, digitizing archives—but rarely in terms of content or expressive form aging. A cultural product, whether literary or cinematic, genuinely ages in its content and form, not just its support. For example, Jimi Hendrix's first guitar solo, stripped of its raw power, now sounds like countless pop songs; one cannot experience it without the accumulated listening history that followed. Similarly, watching Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, or Crash requires setting aside decades of visual culture. Context is crucial: Velázquez, Picasso, Duchamp, or Monty Python cannot be fully understood without knowing their historical and creative milieu. Stefano Monti proposes using AI to generate brief contextual introductions for films, audiobooks, and music albums on streaming platforms, helping audiences bridge the sensory gap between their current cultural baggage and the work's original context. This service, he suggests, could be developed by RAI and sold to other platforms, offering a real value-add by addressing a genuine need rather than competing on technical specs alone.