Brenner Archive tests AI on 12,000 historical photos

The Brenner Archive at the University of Innsbruck is testing artificial intelligence on about 12,000 photographs from the archive of the European Forum Alpbach, ORF reported. A locally operated, open-source system is being used to recognise faces and help organise the images in a database.

Project leader and literary scholar Irene Zanol described the software as a sorting assistant that is more reliable than memory. It can identify duplicate photographs and take over repetitive tasks, freeing staff to focus on quality control and historical classification.

Identifying a person is only the first step, Zanol said. Archive staff must then link photographs to additional information and place them in their historical context. The AI is intended to supplement traditional archival work, not replace it. It provides suggestions that staff either confirm or reject, with human oversight maintained throughout.

Technical project leader Joseph Wang-Kathrein said the team was experimenting with existing open-source AI models. The software first detects faces in scanned photographs and then converts each face into a series of numerical values known as an embedding. Faces that appear similar are positioned closer together in the model’s multidimensional system.

The system does not know which name belongs to a face. It can suggest similar images, but archive staff must make reliable identifications and add further metadata. Historical black and white photographs present a particular challenge because many models were trained mainly on modern colour images. The team is testing whether the system needs modifications or additional training, known as fine tuning.

Data protection was a central requirement from the start. The project team chose an in house solution that runs locally and is open source, so the photographs do not have to be sent to external cloud services or platform operators for facial analysis. Processing becomes especially sensitive when a face is linked to a name and further biographical information.

“The question is not whether AI can do it, but whether AI should be allowed to do it,” Wang-Kathrein said. The project is therefore intended to examine which repetitive tasks machines can handle and where specialist expertise remains necessary, rather than create a fully automated archival process.

Eight decades of history in Alpbach

The European Forum Alpbach archive was donated to the Brenner Archive last year in connection with the forum’s 80th anniversary. The donation comprised more than 60 removal boxes.

The collection of about 12,000 photographs, dating from 1945 to 2015, was the first larger group to be systematically catalogued, the project team said. The rest of the archive is still being processed. Alongside written documents, it includes numerous photographs as well as audio and video recordings.

The collection documents eight decades of culture, history, intellectual history, business and politics, said Ulrike Tanzer, head of the Brenner Archive. Scientists, Nobel laureates, international politicians and philosophers who visited Alpbach included Erwin Schrödinger, Lise Meitner, Karl Popper, Theodor W. Adorno and Indira Gandhi.

Meeting minutes, participant lists and programmes are also part of the collection and provide insights into contemporary history. Tanzer said the archive was particularly significant for Tyrol and the European region. The forum’s origins date back to the immediate postwar period and were linked to efforts to restore international and intellectual exchange.