Indexing rock art (Petroglyphs)

https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/MiningPetroglyphs_KDD09.pdf

Annotating Historical Archives of Images.

https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/AnnotatingHistoricalImages.pdf

Mining Historical Manuscripts with Local Color Patches.

https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/Mother_Fugger_Mining_Historical_Manuscripts_with_Local_Color_Patches.pdf

Broadly, I've seen a number of applications of statistical modeling or machine learning in music, literature and still imagery and movies. Patterns are discovered, permitting the generation of art, determination of authorship, detection of alterations (areas painted over, written passages modified, ...).

Honestly, I think that simple statistical procedures have been among the most interesting in facilitating critique. How many main characters? How many lines of spoken dialogue? How many special effects? ...

There's some work in forgery detection, but real artists are mostly angry about it and skeptical.

There are many promising research areas for machine learning in the humanities, including natural language processing, computer vision, and digital history.

Natural language processing, or NLP, is a subfield of machine learning that focuses on developing algorithms and models that can understand and generate human language. In the humanities, NLP could be used to analyze large collections of text and identify patterns and trends, such as the evolution of language over time or the frequency of certain words or phrases in a given text.

Computer vision is another area of machine learning that is relevant to the humanities. This field focuses on developing algorithms and models that can interpret and understand visual data, such as images and videos. In the humanities, computer vision could be used to automatically analyze and interpret large collections of visual data, such as historical photographs or artwork.

Digital history is another area where machine learning could be applied to the study of the humanities. Digital history involves the use of computational methods to analyze and interpret large collections of historical data, such as census records, newspaper articles, and government documents. Machine learning algorithms could be used to identify patterns and trends in this data, providing new insights into the past.

Overall, the potential applications of machine learning in the humanities are vast and varied. These are just a few examples of the many ways that this technology could be used to advance our understanding of the world and the human experience.