Children's Museums in an AI World - 18

AI & MAR K E TI N G
STARTING CONVERSATIONS
ON AI AND MUSEUM MARKETING
Katie Martin, Marketing & Outreach Specialist, Sacramento Children's Museum
W
hile front-of-house teams at children's museums
are often focused on offering the public nondigital,
hands-on experiences, teams in the back
offices are experiencing the opposite. AI has
entered the marketing mix in innumerable ways:
writing aids, content planning, audio captions-
and much more. The debate really heats up when
we discuss one critical, basic aspect: photography.
Children's museums use photography in
myriad ways, all meant to show the educational
and fun offerings of their spaces. These photos
are usually collected in-house with designated
models or collected with parental permission.
Increasingly, that permission is not granted;
parents have seen the headlines, and know of
the dangers of having pictures of their children
posted online, or want to give them a 'clean
slate' when it comes to their digital identity.
Of course, museums don't intend to add to any
child's risk; there's just no telling when a photo
could be screenshot and used elsewhere. Could
using AI photos fill the gap left if usable photos
of real children are decreasing?
To create realistic photos, AI generators
are filled with thousands of images, learning
patterns, shapes, and gathering data. When you
type in " little boy playing with blocks, " the
program pieces together bits of each element
from its database and presents a finished photo.
Hence, every bit is " real, " but the finished image
is not. There is an absence of a " real " child for
nefarious users to target, and a few more benefits:
the unpredictability of photographing children in
action is nonexistent, scenes and elements not yet
18 | Association of Children's Museums | Hand to Hand

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/02/baby-pictures-online-privacy-instagram https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/27/remove-photos-kids-online/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/27/remove-photos-kids-online/ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/02/baby-pictures-online-privacy-instagram

Children's Museums in an AI World

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