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@article{189678,
        author = {Shailja Nimavat},
        title = {Cultural Memory in the Age of AI Archives},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {},
        volume = {12},
        number = {no},
        pages = {8-12},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=189678},
        abstract = {This paper examines how generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that are trained mostly on Western literary corpora function as the only agents of cultural memory whose operations reproduce longstanding colonial hierarchies. As AI mediates how readers encounter, interpret, and understand literature more and more everyday it acquires power over what is culturally visible and what is obscured. Through the lens of postcolonial theory, digital humanities, and memory studies, the paper argues that non-Western literary traditions appear in AI outputs as spectral presences i.e. flattened, misrepresented, or entirely absent. These “ghosts of the canon” emerge from structural imbalances in digitization, translation, and data availability, which skew AI’s narrative frameworks toward Anglo-European norms. The study analyzes how algorithmic summarization, recommendation systems, and stylistic generation reinforce Western conceptions of literary value while marginalizing Indigenous, African, South Asian, Middle Eastern, and diasporic traditions. It further considers the consequences of relying on AI-generated explanations in classrooms, where such omissions risk shaping a monocultural understanding of global literature. Ultimately, the paper contends that AI does not simply reflect the biases of existing canons but rather actively participates in rewriting them. By highlighting the stakes of algorithmic erasure, the study calls for decolonized data practices, community-led corpus building, and transparent archival infrastructures that make room for the plural, entangled histories of world literature.},
        keywords = {AI archives; cultural memory; postcolonial literature; algorithmic erasure; global literary canon; data bias},
        month = {},
        }