Florida’s Dalí Museum has launched the Ask Dalí experience, allowing visitors to ask the Spanish Surrealist artist questions and receive replies through artificial intelligence (AI).
The first edition of Ask Dalí, previewed at SXSW and made by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, is powered by several machine learning models, including GPT-4 from OpenAI and Eleven V2 from ElevenLabs.
The models have been trained using Salvador Dalí’s writings and archival interviews, resulting in a voice that sounds like the artist’s, and a dialogue that reflects his ideas, imagination and humour.
To start a conversation with Dalí, visitors at the museum can simply pick up a phone inspired by the artist’s ‘Lobster Telephone’ (1938) and begin asking questions.
Hank Hine, director of the Dalí Museum asked the AI-powered artist, “What should a visitor to the Dalí Museum be sure to see?”
He received the following answer: “In the labyrinth of the imagination that unfurls within the Dalí Museum of St. Petersburg, one must seek the melting clocks in the ‘Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory’ where time drips like a dream refusing to be contained.”
The Dalí Museum previously worked with Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P) on ‘Dalí Lives‘, which used AI and machine learning to create a lookalike of the artist.
AI experiences at the Dalí Museum
Later, the museum worked with GS&P and OpenAI on the ‘Dream Tapestry’ experience, which allowed visitors to generate images of their dreams through an AI system called DALL-E.
“Dalí was fascinated by the latest tools and technologies of his era and continually explored various artistic mediums,” said Jeff Goodby, co-founder and co-chairman of GS&P.
“Ask Dalí provides a delightful new way to interact with machine learning technology. Dalí’s poetic writings, in an imaginative style all his own, are the basis of the training, which provides dynamic and unpredictable answers to visitors’ questions.”
Images courtesy of the Dalí Museum
