Artificial intelligence is transforming a 94-year-old Depression-era wedding dress into an interactive exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Monday's Met Gala kicked off the museum's annual Costume Institute exhibit, which focuses on “the sleeping beauties“or clothes that are now extremely fragile and can no longer be worn. The exhibition features over 200 garments and accessories spanning 400 years and invites visitors to touch the embroidered walls and experience what it was like to wear famous garments.
But it is the final point at the exhibition, a dress gowns designed by The Callot sisters that New York socialite Natalie Potter wore on her wedding day on Dec. 4, 1930, has people — and one character — talking. Here, the Met collaborated with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to create a custom chatbot modeled after Potter's personality.
The AI ​​bot can answer visitors' questions about Potter's wedding, her life and her outfit – all in her own personality.
Visitors simply need to scan a QR code to speak to the Potter chatbot via text.
The wedding dress worn by Natalie Potter almost 94 years ago. Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
This is the first AI-assisted exhibit created by the Met, with museum director Max Hollein showing The Wall Street Journal that he sees AI as a pilot program; The visitor's response will tell the Met more about how to use AI further.
“I think artists will use AI in the future in very interesting and intelligent ways,” Hollein told the publication.
OpenAI trained the Potter chatbot on the letters she wrote, newspaper articles and documents from the time. According to Family SearchPotter passed away more than 26 years ago.
The custom chatbot with Potter's character was also a first for OpenAI, which says it is looking for ways to collaborate with industries on real-world use cases.
“I think we have an opportunity here to do something different and the outcome is not predetermined,” OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati told the WSJ.
Connected: OpenAI reportedly used more than a million hours of YouTube videos to train its latest AI model
Finding a strong use case for AI is important as OpenAI faces lawsuits from creators and infringement on copyright grounds.
authors like Paul Tremblay and Sarah Silverman have claimed their books were part of datasets used to train AI without their consent, and artists such as Billie Eilish and Jon Bon Jovi recently signed an open letter about the “disastrous” use of AI in the music industry.
In Aprill, New York Times reported that OpenAI may have trained AI models in YouTube video transcriptions.
Murad Folie with the WSJ's Joanna Stern in March and said the company used publicly available and licensed data to train its chatbots.
Connected: Tennessee just passed a new law to protect musicians from a growing AI threat