From Scanning to Prompting

Since its inception in 1951, Cahiers du cinéma has been France's most influential film review publication, a significant forum for debate. With Google's technological support, this historic archive, encompassing over 800 issues from the past seven decades, is now being made universally available.

The project involved the digitization of every issue of the journal since its inception in 1951, totaling nearly 820 issues and about fifty special editions, which represent approximately 75,000 images. This work was carried out at a Google scanning centre in Munich.

Digitising this extensive archive was crucial for safeguarding the vital cultural heritage of the Cahiers, as the original paper issues are fragile and at risk.

Google's AI language model, Gemini, was employed to generate detailed summaries for each of the 800+ Cahiers du Cinéma issues. These AI-created summaries, reviewed by the Cahiers team, function as an entry point to the content, rather than replacing the original articles and critical perspectives.

According to Julie Lethiphu, director of Les Cahiers du Cinéma, the automatic summary creation alone represents "a work equivalent to more than 7600 hours of work".

Gemini's summaries for the Cahiers du cinéma archive proved highly accurate, with the Cahiers team retaining 90% of the AI's suggestions. These summaries are now accessible on both the Google Arts & Culture platform and the new Cahiers du cinéma website.

This collaboration exemplifies how technology, particularly AI, can be used to both preserve and disseminate cultural heritage in innovative ways. This project is more than just a preservation effort; it is an invitation to explore, share and continue the ongoing dialogue between cinema's past, present and future.