About

The UCLA Large Language Lab develops critical, computational, and humanistic approaches to understanding how artificial intelligence is transforming the production, interpretation, and transmission of cultural memory. Led by Professor Todd Presner, the lab brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers spanning history, literature, information studies, computer science, data science, and digital humanities. Our work combines computational methods and humanistic inquiry, applying AI to large-scale cultural heritage archives while also studying how generative AI systems themselves construct, distort, and mediate historical knowledge. In partnership with institutions such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, we analyze AI-generated media (narrative, image, video, and sound) to document distortion, disinformation, and the erosion of historical nuance, while also developing evaluation frameworks and best practices for museums, libraries, and archives seeking to integrate AI responsibly. More broadly, the lab contributes to emerging critical discourse on AI, asking not only what AI can do with cultural heritage, but what it should do, who controls its defaults, and what forms of accountability are possible when algorithmic systems become primary mediators of the past.