The future of museums is virtual. Moving collections online and creating virtual environments for patrons to experience a museum's offerings exponentially expands the levels of impact and reach a museum can have. Providing digital experiences of museum collections is a necessity for museums that want to build impact, prestige, and revenue. In fact, 98% of museums agree that their highest investment priorities include online platforms and digitalizing their collections [1]. It is clear that museums see the value of digital transformation; however, 69% of museums claimed to have a digital strategy [2], but only 23% of museums have digitalized parts of their collection [3].

Artificial intelligence has allowed the Art Institute of Chicago to track how long visitors stay in its galleries, leading it to offer more small exhibitions focusing on its permanent collection. And A.I. is aiding the conservation and attribution efforts of Robert Erdmann, senior scientist at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He is developing tools that allow visitors to his museum's website -- which contains over 300,000 digital photographs of objects in its collection -- to use artificial intelligence when they try to make comparisons among these objects, exploring, for example, all works -- beside the museum's famous Vermeer painting of a milkmaid -- of women preparing food. Another possible application of artificial intelligence, according to Elizabeth Merritt, director of the American Alliance of Museums' Center for the Future of Museums, could be the ability of visitors to interact with historical figures at history museums, through chatbots developed using the figures' published writings and archives, as well as oral histories. Robert Stein, executive vice president and chief program officer of the American Alliance of Museums, warned that museums must be aware of privacy issues as they use artificial intelligence, for example, protecting whatever personal information their visitors provide.