The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest fashion show not only features a 1930s wedding dress, but also a virtual ghost of the socialite who would have worn it. OpenAI worked with the museum to create Natalie Potter, a fictional, centuries-old woman who is powered by the latest AI model to interact with museum visitors and tell them about the dress and its place in fashion history.
The dress is part of the exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”. With a smartphone, you can open Chat with Natalie and message her with “here” via text, just as you would with ChatGPT.
You can learn about her dress and details about her life, her wedding and the world of 1931 when the dress was made. You can ask questions and get detailed answers that go beyond the typical displays of traditional exhibitions. The idea is that it feels like you are conversing with someone who was there and lived in that world.
Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton came to OpenAI to talk about the use of AI for the exhibition, and worked with the company to design Natalie. Staff trained OpenAI’s model on a database of relevant information, including newspapers, letters, and other documents from the era. OpenAI fed that data into its AI model to produce Natalie. The AI chatbot not only repeats facts, but also mimics the language, beliefs, and approach to conversation common to the era.
Chat with Natalie is strictly text, but an additional feature uses OpenAI’s Sora AI video maker. If you ask Natalie about the accompanying photo, which features a woman in the dress, you’ll be given the option to “reanimate” it, and you’ll see an AI-generated video of the woman in the dress moving around.
AI time travel
“I found it incredibly inspiring because (Bolton’s) vision was to bring this exhibition to life through AI and make people participants, not just passive spectators,” OpenAI CTO Mira Murati explained. “The whole experience of going to a museum becomes more active and more tailored to the thing that you’re interested in.”
While Natalie’s chatbot is limited to a single AI character, it’s easy to imagine how OpenAI and other AI developers could work with museums to bring historical figures to life through AI, not just as recited rules, but as interactive characters that can help educate visitors. When there’s so much information online, this approach isn’t a gimmick; it could be crucial in engaging audiences with history, art, and culture as a whole.
Of course, it won’t happen overnight. Dealing with hallucinations is especially important so that the information and portrayal of people are accurate and fit the persona of the AI. Still, the collaboration between OpenAI and the Met sets a promising precedent for future projects.