Public sector organisations, from councils and healthcare trusts to libraries, museums, and heritage bodies, face increasing pressure to adopt AI. The promise is clear: efficiency, better services, and new ways to engage communities. But choosing the right supplier is not just a technical decision; it’s an ethical and strategic one that directly impacts public trust.

When disaster strikes, time is everything. Earthquakes, floods, and fires leave emergency services with an urgent need: rapid, reliable information about what lies ahead. In those first critical hours, decisions must be made with imperfect knowledge, often putting responders and communities at risk.

AI is no longer confined to labs or tech companies. It shapes everyday experiences, from healthcare to education to the way we consume culture. Yet public understanding of how AI works, and what its limitations are, still lags far behind adoption.

The arts have always been quick to experiment with new technologies. From generative music and AI-assisted visual art to interactive installations, creative projects often push boundaries before businesses catch up. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), these experiments offer more than spectacle, they provide practical lessons in agility, adoption, and customer engagement.

Cultural organisations have always pushed the boundaries of how people connect with knowledge, stories, and creativity. Today, they’re also becoming proving grounds for artificial intelligence, not as a hidden backend tool, but as part of the visitor experience itself.

AI development is often framed as the domain of big tech, driven by global platforms and massive datasets. But for many communities, the most valuable insights aren’t hidden in the world’s largest corporation, they’re found closer to home.

AI is often celebrated for its ability to accelerate processes, unlock insights, and create new forms of engagement. But in sectors like heritage, education, and the creative industries, accuracy matters. An error isn’t just a wrong answer, it can distort historical narratives, misrepresent communities, or erode public trust.

Neural networks are often presented as a leap toward "artificial intelligence" but in reality, they solve a specific kind of mathematical problem, and one that is not easily addressed by classical methods.

3D scanning has transformed the way we preserve and share cultural artefacts, spaces, and even performances. But as the technology becomes more accessible, it’s vital to ask: how do we use these digital assets ethically?

For SMEs, the conversation around AI performance is often dominated by enterprise-scale benchmarks, numbers generated using massive datasets, proprietary hardware, and budgets that dwarf an SME’s annual turnover.

3D scanning and digital twins have transformed how we document cultural heritage, but the story doesn’t end with preservation. Increasingly, curators, educators and digital creatives are asking a bigger question:

What if we don’t just replicate the past, what if we bring it to life?

We’re often told that data is the new oil. But in today’s AI economy, most data owners don’t feel like oil barons.

Whether you’re a small business, a cultural organisation, or a public body, chances are you’ve contributed, knowingly or not, to training the models that power today’s AI platforms. But as those models become billion-pound assets, it’s worth asking: who’s really benefiting from your data?

When people think of 3D and XR, they often imagine headsets in galleries or tech showcases in museums. But there’s a quieter revolution happening, XR is starting to appear in places where people don’t expect it. Libraries. Parks. Hospitals. Town halls.

With the UK investing heavily in compute capacity and the EU’s AI Act entering into force, the ground beneath AI development is shifting fast. For SMEs and cultural organisations using or planning to use AI, the message is clear: agility is everything.

As we continue to refine Elata, our AI-powered 3D imaging platform, we’re increasingly focused on the role it could play in education, outreach, and digital heritage. The goal isn’t just to build cutting-edge technology, it’s to create tools that empower students, teachers, and cultural professionals without requiring technical expertise.

The AI conversation often centres on enterprise transformation, billion-parameter models, and the compute power of global tech firms. But what about the businesses with fewer than 10 employees? The ones without a tech team, without a dedicated IT budget, and without the time to decode jargon?

As generative AI systems become more powerful, and more commercially dominant, copyright law is once again under pressure to adapt. In the UK and across Europe, policymakers are now grappling with the legal, ethical, and economic implications of models trained on vast amounts of existing creative work.

AI and 3D imaging are often framed as tools for reconstruction, to recreate what was lost, document what still exists, or preserve what might soon disappear. But increasingly, they’re also being used for something more ambitious: reimagination.

We often hear about 3D imaging and XR (extended reality) in the context of entertainment, retail, or tech-heavy R&D. But what if their greatest potential lies elsewhere, in the everyday operations of local government, emergency services, and public infrastructure?

As AI adoption accelerates across the UK’s cultural, education, and SME sectors, the question isn’t just what AI to use, it’s who to trust.

Whether you’re trialling a new AI tool, considering a commercial partnership, or integrating AI into public-facing services, choosing the right supplier is critical. A poor decision can mean reputational risk, ethical missteps, or technology that simply doesn’t deliver.