SAO PAULO.- IBM and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo Museum, created the project ‘The Voice of Art, that uses cognitive computing to make museum visits way more interactive and personalized by an artificial intelligence assistant powered by IBM Watson that answers voice questions from visitors about specific paintings and sculptures from Pinacoteca's collection.

The exhibition with the IBM Watson technology has been open to the public since April 5th.

According to a study from the brazilian Institute of Economic Research (Ipea) done in 2010, 70% of brazilians have never been to a museum or cultural institution. The project aims to use Watson's cognitive computing as an important tool to create a different experience for visitors in the museum, where for the first time, any visitor from any cultural or social background will be able, through voice conversations, to interact with the art and have all their questions answered about it, hopefully increasing the brazilian interest about the pieces and it's historical context.

The visit using Watson is simple and intuitive. At Pinacoteca's entrance the visitor receives a smartphone and headphone with the mobile application "The Voice of Art" installed. As they walk through the museum theyll receive notifications as they approach the art pieces and will be prompted to make questions into the headphone's mic about the paintings and sculptures that are nearer to him. All the interaction is made through voice, in portuguese. Hearing impaired visitors will be able to interact via a written chat tool built inside the application.

To be able to answer the questions, IBM programmers worked with art curators and scholars from Pinacoteca Museum to feed Watson with information and answers about the art pieces, the information came from an extensive research and data mining, from books, old news papers, biographies, interviews and the internet. Besides historical and technical facts about the art, Watson was also teached to answer about the correlation between the art pieces and contemporary events.

The app uses Watson APIs that understand human language and intention through IBM artificial intelligence services, hostend on the IBM cloud platform IBM Bluemix.

"We want the visitor to experience a new way to go to a museum, interacting with the art pieces and getting his questions about it answered in real time. There are several curiosities about the selected art-pieces and to have a conversation with them is a very unique and stimulating way to learn. The final objective here is that people finish their visits understanding a bit more about art and with the take-out that a Museum can be a lot of fun" says Fabiana Galetol, Communications Manager at IBM Brasil.

“In such a technological world, museums couldnt be left behind. Pinacoteca is always trying to reinvent itself and creating strategies to reach a broader audience. The partnership between Pinacoteca and IBM represents this effort and resulted in this brand new activation, that is totally interactive and accessible for all audiences”, says Paulo Vicelli, director of institutional relations of Pinacoteca de São Paulo.

"This project shows a deep level of integration between the IBM, Pinacoteca and Ogilvy teams. We wanted to come up with a solution that has a very practical use of Watson's cognitive computing. While also showing how Watson can be applied and used by everyday people to help change a behavior and improve the human experience." says Claudio Lima, Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy Brazil.