A gallery employee poses alongside the artwork "Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear" by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh during a photocall ahead of the reopening of The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House in London on November 10, 2021.
Dutch post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh is widely renowned to be a legendarily influential entity within the history of Western art. Even today, his artistic touch is still often celebrated, be it through the exhibition of his works in museums or through a modern referential interpretation.
However, one of the most head-turning tributes to the Dutch artist was from the Musée d'Orsay, a museum in Paris. The institution is currently hosting an AI-powered installation dubbed "Hello Vincent" that offers viewers a chance to "converse" with, what is essentially, a "chatbot" modeled after Van Gogh.
Talking to Musée d'Orsay's Vincent Van Gogh 'Chatbot'
Developed by the tech startup Jumbo Mana, the installation, also known as "Bonjour Vincent," is intended to embody the late Dutch artist's personality and overall humanity using AI that was trained using over 900 letters that Van Gogh wrote in the 1800s in addition to the countless biographies written about him.
That said, the AI model was still tweaked by its developers in regards to answering the "trickier" questions, specifically inquiries regarding Van Gogh's self-imposed death in July of 1890 when the artist shot himself in a wheat field in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
In a statement to the New York Times, the Paris museum's officials shared that the engineers also trained the AI to subtly sway the conversation away from "touchy" topics such as the artist's suicide, and into messages of hope and perseverance.
"I would implore this: cling to life, for even in the bleakest of moments, there is always beauty and hope," shared the Van Gogh AI in an interview with the NY publication.
Read Also: Egypt's Imhotep Museum in Saqqara Finally Reopens Following a 21-Month Renovation
One Small Piece in a Larger Vincent Van Gogh Exhibition
According to Agnès Abastado, head of Musée d'Orsay's digital development, the discourse surrounding the development of the "Hello Vincent" AI algorithm nearly spanned over a year. Abastado added that the core goal was to provide "not only a commercial project but a cultural one" through the organic sharing of "knowledge."
The AI terminal is part of a larger initiative by the museum to partake in the modern conversation of art, which is a challenge because its collection primarily comprises works from the 19th century. Musée d'Orsay, with support from the French government, collaborated with numerous tech companies like Jumbo Mana to pursue this alignment with modern times through its exhibit "Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: The Final Months."
The show is planned to run until Feb. 4 and is themed around the dreary but captivating last months of the Dutch painter's life where he created more than 107 artworks before finally succumbing to his despair. It also includes another VR experience dubbed "Van Gogh's Palette" employing VR headset technologies conjunctionally developed by Lucid Realities and Tournez S'il Vous Plait.
