[Jack Ashby, assistant director, Museum of Zoology Cambridge, greeting dodo skeleton using AI app]
[AI dodo responding]
[Jack Ashby asking the dodo how it became extinct]
[Dodo’s skeletal head]
[Jack Ashby asking if scientists should try to clone the dodo back from extinction]
[AI dodo responding]
[App with text responses from the dodo]
[Dodo skeleton]
Jack Ashby (interview): “Museums generally choose what to tell people, but in this way they can ask whatever they like and that’s really, really valuable, I think. They can have an actual conversation with an animal, with a specimen, and I think that brings it to life in a really different way than a normal museum exhibit might.”
[Jack Ashby looking at the elephant skeleton]
[Jack Ashby walking through]
[Jack Ashby approaching platypus and asking what it’s like to be a platypus]
[AI platypus responding and mobile phone]
[Jack Ashby asking a giant sloth what it is]
[App responding]
Jack Ashby (interview): “People can ask whatever they like. And when I started working with the Nature Perspectives platform, I was just asking factual questions. But because the animal’s personality comes across really quickly, you end up having an actual conversation where you’re asking more about feelings, you’re asking anything fun. You could ask how its day was or what it had for breakfast. You can have a proper conversation and I think that it’s a different way of engaging and it’s much more real, I think, than most information we get in museums.”
[Jack Ashby asking dodo what it’s favorite piece of music is]
[AI dodo responding]
Gal Zadir (interview): “So the simulations are very flexible. We built what we call a digital mine on a simulation of a specific individual that includes personality traits, as much as we can of the known science about its evolutionary adaptations and so on, alongside a memory bank of things that it could possibly have experienced during its lifetime. So that’s kind of a base layer that gives the visitors or users the ability to ask whatever it is that they’re interested in knowing, so they can ask about any topic and they will get an answer that is grounded in this digital mine, in this digital entity.”
[Narwhal skeleton]
[Butterflies]
[Cockroaches]
[Whale skeleton]
[Ape skeletons with human skeleton on the far right]
[Jack Ashby asking platypus what it thinks about humans]
[AI platypus responding]
Jack Ashby (interview): “It’s really inclusive. So people can tell the animal what age they are. It speaks back to them at a kind of age appropriate level. It speaks in 20 different languages. So whoever you are, you can come and ask a question. You can type in your questions, or you can use voice. So yeah, it’s very inclusive.”
[Museum of Zoology Cambridge]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.