---
title: AI Analysis
description: Use AI to draft titles, descriptions, dates, and subjects for artifacts — individually or in batches.
section: guides
order: 2
updated: 2026-07-01
verified: 2026-07-01
related: [guides/importing-photos, guides/ai-settings]
features: [ai-analysis, multi-format-assets]
---

# AI Analysis

You'll learn what AI analysis produces, how to run it on one artifact or hundreds, and how to review the results safely.

Preservated can look at an image or document and draft the descriptive metadata a curator would otherwise type from scratch: a title, a description, an estimated date, subjects, and places. The AI drafts; you decide what to keep.

## What analysis produces

Running analysis on an artifact suggests:

- **Title** — concise and descriptive, in your institution's style.
- **Description** — a paragraph describing what's visible, written for visitors.
- **Date estimate** — based on visual evidence (clothing, vehicles, signage), expressed with appropriate uncertainty (e.g. "circa 1925").
- **Subjects and places** — topical tags and locations that aid browsing and search.

For video and audio files, Preservated also reads the **recording date embedded by the camera** (the QuickTime/MP4 creation date a phone or camcorder writes into the file). When that date is reliable — for example a clip recorded on a phone, which stamps the local time the footage was shot — it's used as strong evidence for the artifact's date, and fills in the date automatically on import when no catalog date was supplied. The AI still reviews it against what's on screen, so obviously digitized older footage (a file dated last year but showing 1950s scenes) isn't taken at face value.

Every AI result is stored with full provenance: which model ran, when, with what prompt, and what it cost. Original metadata is never silently overwritten — suggestions are applied explicitly.

:::warning
AI date and place estimates are educated guesses from visual evidence. Treat them as leads for research, not facts, and review before publishing.
:::

## Artifacts with multiple images

When an artifact has more than one image — the front and back of a postcard, the pages of a pamphlet, several views of one object — analysis reads them together and drafts one set of suggestions describing the whole object, not just the first image. So a postcard's description can reflect both the photo on the front and the message on the back.

Up to eight images feed the combined pass: all of them when there are eight or fewer, otherwise the first five and the last three — the pages that, on a book or album, carry the most catalog detail (cover, title page, index, colophon).

Each image is also read on its own for text, so words on any page or side are searchable individually even though the description reflects them all — see [Transcription and OCR](/docs/en-US/guides/transcription-and-ocr).

## Analyze a single artifact

1. Open the artifact in the admin area.
2. Choose **Analyze** from the AI tools.
3. Review the suggested fields side-by-side with current values and accept the ones you want.

## Analyze in batches

For a whole import's worth of artifacts, use **Admin → Operations → Batch Analysis**:

1. Select the artifacts to analyze (filter by collection, date added, or missing-metadata).
2. Start the run. Items process through the background job queue with live progress.
3. Review results as proposals — accept or reject field by field, per artifact or in bulk.

Batch runs can be cancelled mid-flight; completed items keep their proposals.

## Costs and usage

AI analysis calls a vision model per artifact, which has a per-call cost. The AI usage view shows what each feature has spent, broken down by model, so there are no surprises at the end of the month.

## Shape the output — or turn features off

Analysis follows your institution's **AI guidance** (titling conventions, preferred vocabulary, local context), and each AI feature can be disabled institution-wide. Both live in Admin → Settings — see [AI Settings and House Style](/docs/en-US/guides/ai-settings).

## Beyond analysis

Metadata drafting is one of several AI tools in Preservated — colorization of black-and-white photos, document OCR and transcription of audio/video, wiki article generation, and guided tours are covered by their own features and all share the same provenance and review model.