Algorithmic Visibility and the Standardisation of Cultural Narratives
Over the past two years, the way people access information and cultural content has changed significantly. Artificial intelligence tools are now part of everyday use, acting increasingly as a first point of access to knowledge.
At the same time, many cultural narratives remain undocumented and difficult to access, particularly those that exist outside dominant linguistic and cultural contexts.
The Swiss Arab Cultural Alliance was launched within this evolving landscape, working on the circulation of contemporary Arab visual narratives that are often rich and diverse, yet still under-represented and unevenly accessible.
As digital and algorithmic systems shape how knowledge is accessed, they also influence which narratives become visible, how they are structured, and from whose perspective they are understood. This shift reshapes how reality itself is perceived.
Visibility and its limits
Artificial intelligence systems rely on existing digital content, but this content is far from evenly distributed. Out of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, only a small fraction are meaningfully represented in digital environments, and an even smaller number are supported by AI systems in ways that allow for nuance and depth. English and a limited number of dominant languages continue to structure most of the available data.
This imbalance is not only linguistic. It reflects broader dynamics that shape how knowledge is produced and circulated across contexts. It is also linked to the environments in which these technologies are designed. The development of artificial intelligence has largely taken place within specific geographic, economic, and social contexts, particularly in the United States and Western Europe, and within relatively homogeneous professional environments. Research has shown that the technology sector remains predominantly male and concentrated within a limited set of cultural and educational backgrounds, which inevitably influences how systems are conceived, trained, and deployed.
As a result, the way information is structured and made accessible reflects these underlying conditions.
From access to perception
As some content becomes more visible than others, it begins to shape how knowledge is perceived. Repeated exposure to similar perspectives influences how cultural contexts are understood, often in ways that remain implicit.
Certain narratives continue to exist but circulate less widely, or in altered forms. Translation, for instance, can make content more accessible while transforming its meaning, particularly when cultural references, nuances, or modes of expression do not fully carry over. In a similar way, visual languages can be detached from the contexts in which they were created, becoming recognisable styles without retaining the narrative depth that originally gave them meaning.
Content matters, and so does how people understand it. The way it spreads influences what people learn and which views become common.
A gradual standardisation of imaginaries
This process does not eliminate cultural diversity. It standardises how it is expressed and the perspectives through which it is presented. As content circulates in more uniform formats, different cultural expressions begin to align with the same frames, regardless of their original context.
Over time, this produces a more homogeneous way of seeing and interpreting the world. What begins to narrow visibility, and the plurality of ways of thinking that cultural content and literature has historically sustained.
This plurality is essential. It allows for different interpretations, supports critical thinking, and makes it possible to question dominant perspectives. Without it, understanding becomes more uniform, and the ability to imagine alternative ways of seeing, and relating to the world is reduced.
Beyond access: the role of narratives
Many current responses focus on improving access by expanding datasets, supporting more languages, or making systems more inclusive. These efforts matter. But access alone does not address how material is produced, framed, and shared. As it circulates more widely, it often moves through similar formats, which can flatten meaning.
Narratives sit at the core of this process. Across time, societies have developed their own ways of understanding the world, built from lived experience, memory, and cultural context. Stories, images, and forms of expression do more than pass on information. They carry ways of seeing, interpreting, and relating to others.
Keeping a real plurality of narratives means paying attention to whose voices are present from the start. It means looking at who creates, selects, and shapes what feeds these systems. A wider range of voices allows for a wider range of perspectives to exist and be recognised.
This is why the role of artists, publishers, and cultural actors matters. They work close to these forms of expression. They hold context, intention, and nuance. Involving them helps ensure that what circulates retains the depth and perspective it comes from.
A concrete tension for cultural actors
For artists, publishers, and cultural organisations, these changes are already part of everyday practice.
Online visibility has become a condition for reaching an audience. Without it, work struggles to find recognition or create opportunities. Yet this visibility also brings exposure to forms of reuse that are hard to control. Work can be absorbed into datasets, reinterpreted far from its original context, or shared in ways that weaken its link to authorship and intent.
This situation now sits at the centre of debates on copyright and intellectual property. As creative works are used to train AI systems, questions of consent, attribution, and compensation come into focus. For many cultural actors, this goes beyond a technical issue. It affects how their work is recognised, protected, and valued.
The challenge lies in how visibility is achieved and what it does to the work. Cultural actors navigate this every day.
The new Swiss AI Apertus focuses on openness and transparency. © EPFL/ETH Zurich/CSCS/molinari design
A Swiss context
In Switzerland, initiatives such as Apertus, first released in September 2025 by EPFL, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, reflect a growing effort to address these challenges. By focusing on multilingualism, transparency, and open‑source development, these projects aim to broaden access and reduce reliance on centralised technological systems.
These developments are particularly important at the infrastructure level. They expand what can be processed and made accessible, contributing to a more diverse technological landscape. However, they do not determine how narratives are contextualised.
This approach illustrates a broader effort to rethink how AI systems are developed and governed, as demonstrated by the Apertus project.
“Apertus is designed for the common good. It is one of the few large language models of this scale to be fully open source, and the first to integrate, from the outset, core principles such as multilingualism, transparency, and regulatory compliance.
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Connecting existing efforts
In the case of the Arab world, universities and research centres are increasingly joining forces to explore artificial intelligence, language technologies, and digital humanities. These efforts aim to better represent Arabic language and cultures within technological systems, addressing gaps in existing datasets and models that often overlook regional diversity.
Some of these initiatives are already taking shape. In 2025, the American University of Sharjah and Al Akhawayn University in Morocco established a partnership connecting Arabic studies, digital humanities, and the ethical development of emerging technologies. Among other projects, they created an open‑source Arabic dataset to support research and applications that reflect local linguistic and cultural contexts.
At the same time, investment in AI and data science is growing across the region, and cultural leaders like Bodour al‑Qasimi, the Emirati publisher and academic leader, have played a key role in promoting inclusive and locally grounded approaches.
This leads to a critical question for initiatives like the Swiss Arab Cultural Alliance: what role can cultural and narrative practices play in ensuring that stories remain rooted in the perspectives and communities from which they emerge, even as they become part of emerging technological ecosystems?
The role of Swiss Arab Cultural Alliance
The Swiss Arab Cultural Alliance operates within this space. Its approach focuses on engaging with stories at an early stage, before they are reduced to data or detached from their environments. By working with artists, publishers, and researchers, it seeks to ensure that narratives retain the perspectives from which they emerge.
The Alliance operates at the level where narratives are shaped, not only where they circulate, contributing to forms of visibility that preserve their complexity while connecting cultural, academic, and technological ecosystems across Switzerland and the Arab region.
Reframing the question
As artificial intelligence becomes more widely embedded in everyday systems, questions of ethics and representation are becoming increasingly central.
For under-represented voices and narratives, this is not a secondary issue. It requires engaging with artificial intelligence as an integral part of the process, rather than treating it separately, as doing so would limit the real impact of how these perspectives are carried and understood.
The challenge, therefore, is not only to make these narratives visible, but to ensure they are meaningfully integrated into the algorithmic systems that increasingly shape access to information, while remaining grounded in the contexts and perspectives from which they emerge.
