Who Controls the Past? Generative AI and Disputes over Collective Memory in the Digital Age

Abstract

This study analyzes how datafication, platformization, and generative artificial intelligence impact the construction of collective memory in contemporary digital culture. This research is justified by the growing influence of algorithmic infrastructures that, by mediating social, communicational, and subjective interactions, cease to be mere tools and become symbolic devices that actively modulate what society chooses to remember, forget, or transform into historical truth. This study employed a qualitative exploratory and interpretive methodology, based on a broad literature review and the analysis of technical and institutional reports published from 2024 to 2025. This work articulates classic theoretical contributions on social memory with contemporary concepts from platform studies and generative artificial intelligence. The main finding has revealed that generative artificial intelligence has undergone a decisive shift, migrating from technical uses to subjective and existential domains, such as therapy, life organization, and purpose-oriented thinking. This phenomenon establishes a new regime of synthetic memory, in which the past is reconstructed through statistical correlations, fragmenting collective memory into opaque personalized narratives detached from real experience. The study concludes that collective memory has become an arena of disputes mediated by algorithms that favor digital historical revisionism and affective engagement. Given the normalization of synthetic content, the study highlights the urgent need to regulate platforms, promote algorithmic literacy, and strengthen traditional memory institutions, such as universities and museums, to guarantee historical record integrity and citizens’ critical autonomy.