Brenner Archive tests AI on 12,000 Alpbach photos

The Brenner Archive at the University of Innsbruck is launching a project titled ‘FACE-EFA’ to digitize and analyze approximately 12,000 photographs from the European Forum Alpbach (EFA) archives using artificial intelligence.

Project leader Irene Zanol described the locally operated, open-source AI application as a sorting assistant designed to handle repetitive tasks, such as identifying duplicate photos, rather than replacing human archivists. The software translates faces into numerical values, known as embeddings, to group similar faces together.

Technical lead Joseph Wang-Kathrein noted that the system uses existing open-source AI models. Human staff will remain responsible for the final verification, historical contextualization, and linking identified individuals to specific biographical information.