The Generative Mechanism of AIGC-Enabled Digital Revitalization of Intangible Cultural Heritage from a Cultural Memory Perspective

Abstract

With digital technologies increasingly embedded in systems of cultural production and dissemination, the protection of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is shifting from static preservation toward digital expression, contextualized interpretation, and dynamic regeneration. As an intelligent content-generation technology, AIGC can reorganize ICH materials across text, images, audio, video, virtual characters, and interactive narratives. From the perspective of cultural memory, this article regards ICH as a living repository of experience, local knowledge, communal interaction, and identity. It examines persistent problems in current ICH digitization, including data-oriented display, fragmented dissemination, weakened subjectivity, and cultural distortion. The paper argues that AIGC can support the digital revitalization of ICH through five linked stages: cultural memory extraction, semantic reconstruction, multimodal translation, interactive co-creation, and value transformation. AIGC should not replace traditional transmission. Rather, through data organization, narrative reconstruction, media translation, and public participation, it can help transform preserved cultural resources into cultural memories that are understandable, experiential, and shareable. At the same time, authenticity verification, the central role of inheritors, data-source standardization, intellectual-property protection, and algorithmic-ethics governance should be built into a multi-actor collaborative process for ICH revitalization.