Using AI dead animals are to receive a new lease of life to share their stories and even their experiences of the afterlife. The technology allows the animals to describe their time on Earth and the challenges they faced, in the hope of reversing apathy towards the biodiversity crisis. The project was devised by Nature Perspectives, a company that is building AI models to help strengthen the connection between people and the natural world. For each exhibit, the AI is fed specific details on where the specimen lived, its natural environment, and how it arrived in the collection, alongside all the available information on the species it represents.
The exhibits change their tone and language to suit the age of the person they are talking to, and can converse in more than 20 languages, including Spanish and Japanese. The platypus has an Australian twang, the red panda is subtly Himalayan, and the mallard sounds like a Brit. Through live conversations with the exhibits, Ashby hopes visitors will learn more than can fit on the labels that accompany the specimens. As part of the project, the conversations that visitors hold with the exhibits will be analysed to get a better picture of the information people want on specimens. While the AI suggests several questions, visitors can ask whatever they like.
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