Museum “raised” Salvador Dali with artificial intelligence

Salvador Dali is welcoming his guests at The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida from Saturday, May 11 -the birthday of the artist- with the help of artificial intelligence.

“Dali Lives” was announced in January and is an initiative in honor of the great artist for the 115th anniversary of his birth. The “Dali Lives” experience utilizes machine learning technology to create a Dali model, with which visitors can interact with displays across the museum.

As said Hank Hain, executive director of the museum, Dali himself had expressed the hope that after his death, people would say that “Dali died, but not completely”. With this technology, visitors can experience the artist’s personality closely, while admiring his works.

The museum collaborated with Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS & P) to “resurrect” the “master” of surrealism: Within the framework of the project, hundreds of interviews, quotes and rich archival material were used to “teach” an A. I. algorithm to “learn” the face of Dali. Then they searched and found an actor with similar physical characteristics. Subsequently, artificial intelligence makes a Dali model similar to the face and expressions of the artist. For information purposes of the visitors interacting with “Dali Lives”, the museum used original Dali’s own writings, combined with more modern messages, which, in total, the actor is to make alive.

As Popular Mechanics notes, this is a demonstration of the level at which deepfakes technology has reached, allowing for the realistic “introduction” of a celebrity in videos. Together with an actor that mimics the artist’s distinctive accent, the final result is a highly impressive interactive experience that is different for every visitor.