UNESCO has released a report from an expert group (CULTAI) on how AI is changing culture. The recommendation is clear: culture belongs in national AI strategies, not just technology.
- UNESCO published a report from the expert group CULTAI on how AI is changing the cultural sector (November 25, 2025).
- The call: culture belongs in national AI strategies, not just technology.
- Three imperatives: rights and authorship, pluralism against algorithmic homogenization, a sustainable creative future.
Some reports get written just to exist. Some arrive on time. This one belongs to the second kind. Almost nobody will read it - but UNESCO (the UN's cultural organization) prepared it right before the major MONDIACULT 2025 conference, through the independent expert group CULTAI, on how AI is changing culture.
What matters here is the framework, not the report itself. UNESCO wants culture in AI strategies on equal footing with technology - and rightly so. Once an algorithm recommends what you watch, read, and listen to, it doesn't just sort culture. It slowly shapes it. The machine doesn't hate small cultures. It just doesn't see them in the numbers.
For once on this topic, the warning comes before the damage. Left to itself, the recommendation machine pulls everything toward the average, and a small culture like ours pays the bill first. That's why the word 'deliberate' carries all the weight here. Whether anyone reads it in time is a different question.