Students of the University of South Bohemia (USB), Rabiya Irshad (Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters) and Benedikt Mrázek (Faculty of Theology), took part from 17 to 19 September 2025 in the international hackathon KreativHack AI for Cultural Heritage at Opole University of Technology in Poland. Teams from 11 EU universities competed to create the best digital product within 24 hours. Exceptional success was achieved by philosophy student Benedikt Mrázek from USB’s Faculty of Theology, who, together with his team, won first place. Dr. Daniel D. Novotný from the Centre of Applied Philosophy at USB’s Faculty of Theology also participated in the hackathon as a mentor.
The word “hackathon” combines “hacking” and “marathon” – it is a specific event where participants, usually programmers, designers, analysts and others, gather to design and develop an innovative project such as software or a web application in teams. The results are then presented and judged. The key elements of a hackathon are teamwork, rapid solution development and a creative approach to the challenge.
“With our four-member international team (members came from Italy, Ukraine and Bulgaria besides the Czech Republic), we created an AI- and AR-based tourist assistant called ARtifact in 24 hours of intensive work. We plan to continue developing the project and bring the application to a state where it can be used in practice. We are all thrilled by our project’s success,” commented Benedikt Mrázek on the extraordinary international achievement.
The winning application offers three features:
- Ghost of the Past – enables the resurrection of non-existent historical monuments via 3D visualization and their virtual placement in the original environment using AR.
- Pathfinder – an AR assistant for planning trips to points of interest; users can preview a 3D model of the target monument before travel and plan routes and stops.
- ARtie – an AI assistant that helps with comprehensive trip planning, provides information on the history of visited sites and offers a wide range of additional functions.
Within the KreativEU project, the hackathon is part of the WP5 Smart Sustainability activity agenda – smart solutions linking artificial intelligence and other modern technologies with the protection of eco-cultural heritage, support for sustainable living and the strengthening of European values such as human dignity, freedom and democracy.
