Published 2026-09-29
Keywords
- AI,
- Serious Game,
- Digital Twin,
- Generative Modelling,
- Tech methodologies
How to Cite
Copyright (c) 2026 Alessandro Basso
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Recent advances in Machine Learning (ML) signal the dawn of a fourth digital revolution, mirroring the historical significance of the transition to CAD. This shift redefines design methodologies and democratizes access to complex content creation. Simultaneously, video games are emerging as the primary immersive medium for cultural dissemination. In this landscape, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands as the optimal tool for process optimization and heritage valorization, facilitating the integrated management of both Tangible Heritage - via Digital Twins from NeRF and Gaussian Splatting algorithms - and Intangible Heritage. The application of AI in generating game dynamics and environments through auto-modeling from prompts challenges the traditional view of technology as a replacement for creativity, framing it instead as a strategic asset to be mastered through critical learning. While the total generation of a video game via prompts remains distant due to the inherent complexity of gamification’s algorithmic and narrative layers - despite high-profile industry predictions for 2027 - the synergy between human logic and AI tools promises to redefine the representation of reality. This collaborative approach between design vision and algorithmic automation opens new horizons for preserving collective memory and enabling interactive heritage engagement.
References
- A. Basso, Dentro le Carceri di Piranesi: il virtuale come documentazione attraverso l’esplorazione grafico-percettiva, in R. Salerno (a cura di), Rappresentazione materiale/immateriale. Drawing as (in)tangible representation, atti del 40° Convegno internazionale dei docenti delle discipline della rappresentazione, XV Congresso UID (Milano, 13–15 settembre 2018), Gangemi Editore, Roma 2018, pp. 909–918.
- A. Basso, Ambienti virtuali per nuove forme di comunicazione / Virtual environments for new media, Aracne Ed., Roma 2020.
- A. Basso et al., Evolution of rendering based on Radiance Fields. The Palermo case study for a comparison between NeRF and Gaussian
- Splatting, in The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLVIII-2-2024, pp. 57-64.
- A. Basso et al., D(A)Nte’s (I)Nferno: rappresentazione dell’Inferno dantesco attraverso tecniche di disegno integrato, A.I. e parametrico,
- in EVA Berlin 2025. Electronic Media and Visual Arts: 28th Issue of the EVA Berlin Conference, arthistoricum.net, Heidelberg 2025, pp. 116-127.
- R. Bommasani et al., On the opportunities and risks of foundation models (2021), rapporto di ricerca, arXiv:2108.07258.
- J. Bruce et al., Genie: Generative interactive environments, in Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (PMLR, vol. 235), 2024, pp. 4603-4623.
- A. Cassar, D. Baker, M. Ioannides, From Digital Twin to Memory Twin: A holistic framework for cultural heritage documentation, interpretation, and adaptive reuse, in The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLVIII-M-9-2025, pp. 203-209.
- I. Cazzaro, Digital 3D reconstruction as a research environment in art and architecture history: Uncertainty classification and visualization, arthistoricum.net, 2026, pp. 89-91.
- J. Chao, Ricerca sull’applicazione dell’IA generativa nella progettazione di arte digitale per il patrimonio culturale immateriale, in Journal of Global Humanities and Social Sciences, VI, 2025, 3, pp. 70-78.
- W. Chuyao, N. A. Adzharuddin, Synthetic Authenticity and Audience Trust in AI-Generated Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Qualitative Multimodal Study, in eJOMS - Journal of Media and Society, 2025, pp. 2-10.
- M. Foka, A. Griffin, AI, Cultural Heritage, and Bias: Some Key Queries That Arise from the Use of GenAI, in Heritage, VII, 2024, 11, pp. 6125-6136.
- D. Ha, J. Schmidhuber, World models (2018), rapporto di ricerca, arXiv:1803.10122.
- D. Hafner et al., Mastering diverse control tasks through world models, in Nature, DCXL, 2025, pp. 647-653.
- G. Murtas, V. Lombardo, Rediscovering the Past: Serious Games for Archaeology, in IEEE Transactions on Games, 2025, pp. 1-15.
- G. Murtas, V. Lombardo, Where Does Value Take Shape? An AI-Human Serious Game Design Experiment on the Poème Électronique, in Proceedings of AI4HGI ‘25, CNR-ILC, 2025.
- F. Orletti (a cura di), Comunicare il patrimonio culturale. Accessibilità comunicativa, tecnologie e sostenibilità, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2021.
- J. Parker-Holder, S. Fruchter, Genie 3: A new frontier for world models, Google DeepMind, 5 agosto 2025, https://deepmind.google/blog/genie-3-a-new-frontier-for-worldmodels/.
- R. Rombach et al., High-resolution image synthesis with latent diffusion models, in Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, IEEE, New Orleans 19-24 giugno 2022, pp. 10684-10695.
- L. Smith, Uses of Heritage, Routledge, London 2006.
- G. Sugiyama, I. Bourgeois, H. Rodrigues, A holistic methodology for the assessment of Heritage Digital Twin applied to Portuguese case studies, in Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, XXXVI, 2025, e00390.
- Team HY-World, HY-World 2.0: A multi-modal world model for reconstructing, generating, and simulating 3D worlds (2026), rapporto
- tecnico, arXiv:2604.14268; codice e documentazione: https://github.com/Tencent-Hunyuan/HYWorld-2.0, consultati il 14 settembre 2026.
- C. Tsita, M. Satratzemi, A serious game design and evaluation approach to enhance cultural heritage understanding, in A. Liapis et al. (a cura di), Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (vol. 11899), Springer, Cham 2019, pp. 438-446.
- World Labs, Marble: A multimodal world model, 12 novembre 2025, https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/marble-world-model, consultato il 14 settembre 2026.
- World Labs, Announcing the World API, 21 gennaio 2026, https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/announcing-the-world-api, consultato il 14 settembre 2026.
- S. Wu, AI and Intangible Heritage: Exploring Sustainable Cultural Transmission Through a Dual-Framework Approach, in Applied and Computational Engineering, CLXIV, 2025, pp. 8-19.