Walk With Me: Palace of Versailles lets visitors chat with 20 AI-powered garden statues

The Palace of Versailles has launched an AI-powered app that allows visitors to have conversations with 20 statues throughout the palace gardens, including Apollo and Cupid riding on a Sphinx. The innovative experience, powered by Ask Mona, an AI platform, and OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence company, enables tourists to interact with historical figures in three languages, offering a novel way to explore the palace’s heritage through technology-enhanced storytelling.

How it works: The app uses artificial intelligence to bring statues to life through conversational interactions that reveal historical insights and lesser-known details about Versailles.

• Visitors can speak with 20 different statues positioned throughout the palace gardens in three languages.
• “Each exchange reveals anecdotes, historical accounts and often little-known details, enriching our exploration of the gardens and our understanding of Versailles’ heritage,” according to a press statement.
• The technology is powered by the AI platform Ask Mona in partnership with OpenAI.

What they’re saying: A New York Times reporter observed the app in action, describing how visitors engage with the historical figures.

• When a teenage boy asked the statue of Cupid, god of love: “Will I ever be rich?” the AI-powered response was: “Ah, becoming rich is an enigma that even my Sphinx is unable to solve! But remember: the source of true riches is, perhaps, love, which subdues all of life’s enigmas.”

Why this matters: The initiative represents a creative application of AI technology in cultural heritage tourism, transforming traditional museum experiences into interactive educational encounters that could inspire similar implementations at historical sites worldwide.