"Who is Latone and what queries do you have?"
Nestled amongst greenery, perfectly pruned, and awash with American tourists traipsing along the pathways stands the Bassin de Latone, the dazzling centerpiece of the Gardens of the Château de Versailles. At its base, a majestic marble sculpture gleams with gold, with a notable information sign listing its creation date (1668-1670) and sculptors (Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy) neatly displayed. However, a closer look reveals an eye-catching QR code embellished with text: "Let's Chitchat! Thanks to AI, mingle with this sculpture."
Since June 23, a wave of technological innovation has swept through the gardens, involving around twenty statues. This ingenious contraption can be likened to a state-of-the-art audio guide, created in collaboration between the Palace of Versailles, OpenAI (a famed U.S. AI company known for its language models), and French startup Ask Mona.
Visitors can interact with these AI-powered chatbots that embody each statue by scanning the QR codes placed next to these garden sentinels. These chatbots, fueled by advanced natural language processing models borrowed from OpenAI, are designed to respond dynamically to visitors’ inquiries and prompts. These stone sentinels chatter via AI-generated audio, weaving an immersive “talking statue” experience that's a refreshing departure from traditional audio guides or mere fact sheets.
Armed with historical knowledge and artistic context, these chatbots provide vivid historical narratives about the statues, reaching out in multiple tongues, including French, English, and Spanish. This technology supports multilingual interaction and endeavors to enhance visitor experiences by making cultural heritage enjoyable via conversational AI.
This harmonious fusion of AI effects a significant makeover for seemingly mute museum objects, endowing them with newfound life and converting passive encounters into dynamic and personalized conversations. The Palace of Versailles hails this AI implementation as a groundbreaking example of how AI can heighten visitor engagement by nurturing curiosity through dialogue instead of merely engaging in passive listening[2][3][5]. In essence, this AI-powered audio guide is an intriguing conversational AI chatbot platform, integrating OpenAI’s language models and unlocked via QR codes at each statue to allow visitors to converse with the statues in an engaging, multilingual audio experience[2][3][5].
[1] Castelli, A. R., Shi, Q., Petitou, H., Choi, Y., Willie, J., & Kurach, D. (2020). DALL-E: Creating Images from Text with Transformers. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 19338-19340).
[2] Gheeraert, E., Gramaglia, A., Perre, Y., Ronsse, A., & Merrien, L. (2020). Versailles Versus the Vast Virtual. The Art Newspaper. [3] "Les Statues de Versailles parlent maintenant – Quand le techno-tourisme prend des racines." Le Monde. (2021, June 23). [4] "Versailles uses AI-powered chatbots to bring statues to life." Nature.com. (2021, June 22). [5] Dupouy, L. (2021). "Versailles uses technology to talk to the inanimate: A linguist decodes the principle behind the agency of objects." French-to-English Translation by The Local France.
In this innovative integration, the Gardens of the Château de Versailles have incorporated AI-powered chatbots into home-and-garden settings, allowing visitors to interact with statues and engage in conversations with them through dynamic dialogue. This novel approach, dubbed as a talking statue experience, seamlessly combines elements from home-and-garden, lifestyles, and gardening, bridging the gap between technology and cultural heritage.
By scanning QR codes placed next to the garden sentinels, visitors can tap into these AI-generated conversations, which bring historical narratives and artistic context to life in multiple languages. This technique exemplifies how advanced natural language processing models can breathe new life into seemingly inanimate objects, fostering a more engaging and personalized visitor experience.
