Vietnam pushes AI integration into cultural industry amid copyright and data challenges

Artificial intelligence is being positioned as a core technology to transform creation, production and distribution across Vietnam's cultural industries. Proponents say AI can help preserve heritage, promote national identity, boost competitiveness and open international markets. It is already used in cinema for image restoration, subtitling, dubbing and audience analytics; in music for composing, arranging and rapid prototyping; in publishing for editing, translation and text summarisation; and in journalism, gaming, advertising, tourism, crafts and design for increased productivity and personalised experiences. A robot guided by AI now leads tours at Ho Chi Minh City Museum.

Experts warn of significant challenges. Training AI on large datasets raises copyright concerns, while many Vietnamese cultural assets remain undigitised, limiting data quality. A shortage of talent that combines artistic sensibility with digital and AI expertise hampers adoption, and high costs for data infrastructure, software licences and rights protection make implementation difficult for small firms and independent artists. The issue has been highlighted by Dr Tran Kim Ba of the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, noting the need for policy and investment to address these barriers.