Artificial Intelligence and Eco-Museums: Climatic Challenges and Ethical Perspectives within European Cultural Sustainability

Abstract Eco-museums – process-based, place-bound, and community-governed – center intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and a symbiotic relationship with the landscape. As digitization becomes routine in the European GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), artificial intelligence (AI) introduces opportunities for access and mediation alongside environmental and ethical risks. The author advances a guiding principle and a 5.0 orientation in which technology is a means proportionate to human and planetary objectives. A central concern is the preservation of silent knowledge – embodied, practice-based competencies transmitted intergenerationally – which underpins ICH. AI must, therefore, assist rather than replace living practices. Grounded in the European framework (Green Deal, Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, AI Act), the article derives operational criteria for eco-museums: editorial transparency and human-in-the-loop review; governance of cultural data (consent, licensing); minimization of compute through short, contextual texts, retrieval-over-generation, and reuse/caching; clear labeling of AI involvement; and prudential choices of infrastructure and providers. The environmental analysis highlights inference-driven energy and water footprints and rebound effects; the ethical analysis addresses language standardization, bias, disembodiment of practice, and organizational dependencies. Benefits are attainable when AI serves as an editorial and linguistic aid, providing multilingual/plain-language access, micro-itineraries, and concise narrative syntheses that connect material and intangible heritage, all while remaining locally reviewed and anchored in context. The article concludes that AI is acceptable in eco-museums only when it serves the mission and measures its effects – proportional, transparent, auditable, and locally governed.