The grounds of the Palace of Versailles in Paris. An AI-powered feature in the historic site's app allows visitors to chat with 20 outdoor statues throughout the famous Baroque gardens. Photo / James Hill, the New York Times
Early one midsummer afternoon in the Palace of Versailles’ gardens, a pigeon landed effortlessly on a masterpiece of French outdoor sculpture: a 17th-century statue of Apollo on a chariot, pulled by four horses.
The statue, made of gilded lead, has stood in a vast fountain at Versailles in the three-plus centuries since Louis XIV was king of France.
And it has now entered the digital age via a new feature on the historic site’s app.
Powered by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, an audio tool lets visitors (on or off site) converse with 20 outdoor statues in three languages.
On that summer afternoon, I put the chatbot to the test.
I asked Apollo a few obvious questions — who had put him there, what he represented — and received textbook answers, delivered in perfect English by a confident male voice.
Then, spotting the pigeon still perched on Apollo’s head, I opted for a bolder line of questioning: What if a pigeon took a toilet break on this peerless treasure?
“When pigeons show their affection on my chariot, it’s hardly a grand moment. But the caretakers of Versailles are vigilant,” Apollo replied.
“They ensure I remain in shining condition, restoring my brilliance after such interruptions. So no lasting harm from those little birds!”
Versailles, near Paris, receives 8.4 million visitors a year, according to France’s Culture Ministry, more than any other French heritage site except the Louvre Museum.
Yet 80% of them are international tourists, and their average age is 40.
So the palace is engaging with OpenAI and other big tech companies with the hope of not just informing visitors but also luring audiences that are younger and more homegrown. (The New York Times filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI for using published work without permission to train its artificial intelligence. OpenAI has denied those claims.)
Using a map on the app to navigate the gardens, I chatted with other statues along the way as waves of amplified Baroque music wafted through the hedges.
Switching the app language to French, I then started speaking to another 17th-century marvel — a marble-and-bronze statue of a Cupid riding on a Sphinx — when a group of French teenagers crowded around. I invited them to interrogate the Sphinx via my smartphone screen.
“Will I ever be rich?” asked a teenage boy.
“Ah, becoming rich is an enigma that even my Sphinx is unable to solve!” the statue replied.
“But remember: The source of true riches is, perhaps, love, which subdues all of life’s enigmas.”
“Which team will win the Champions League?” asked another.
“Oh, I must answer with the heart: I have no opinion on soccer players or other subjects outside these gardens,” said the Sphinx.
“I invite you to admire the timeless beauty that surrounds us.”
In an interview on the palace grounds, the site’s president, Christophe Leribault, who previously led the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, said the OpenAI feature was a reliable educational aid.
“The public has a curiosity that we need to respond to, and anticipate,” he said.
What visitors get from the AI experience is “not a gadget, but an informed tool co-designed with our specialist teams which is artistically sound and doesn’t say things that are meaningless.”
Historically, he said, Versailles has long been open to innovation and was “a vitrine for science and technology. It was important for any inventor to show the king their invention.”
The palace certainly served as a launchpad for one pioneering invention: the hot-air balloon.
Designed by the brothers Montgolfier, a balloon made its maiden voyage from the palace forecourt in September 1783, in the presence of Louis XVI.
Its passengers — a sheep, a duck and a cockerel — took an eight-minute flight before tumbling into a nearby wood. (They were unharmed.)
Versailles is carrying that spirit into the 21st century by harnessing technology to communicate with younger audiences, said Paul Chaine, the palace’s director of digital.
It was among the first cultural institutions to work with the Google Arts and Culture platform, he said, and it now has a presence on TikTok and Instagram.
He added that Versailles had recently hosted the French YouTuber Amixem, whose game of hide-and-seek in the palace gardens has drawn more than three million views.
“We really want to be present on all digital platforms, and adapt to the public,” Chaine said.
Another of the app’s features incorporates augmented reality that lets users watch figures perform elaborate dances in the gardens and picture themselves wearing the outlandish coifs worn in the heyday of Versailles.
Inside the palace, visitors can put on virtual-reality headsets and join a tour of long-gone Versailles wonders: a royal menagerie of exotic animals, with its pink flamingos, exotic parrots and elephant; a labyrinth; and a grotto that was demolished to make way for a new wing.
Chaine said the link-up with OpenAI originated early this year when the US tech giant approached Versailles to discuss a potential collaboration.
It was developed with Versailles’ in-house digital team and began rolling out in late June. Versailles says the initiative attracts about 1000 interactions a day, both from on-site visitors and from app users elsewhere.
Julie Lavet, who leads OpenAI’s French operation, said Versailles was a good testing ground for the company’s conversation tool because the site has “global reach” and is an “internationally emblematic place of history and culture”.
This is not OpenAI’s first collaboration with a cultural institution.
Last year, it created a chatbot that allowed visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to converse with a simulation of the socialite Natalie Potter while viewing a display of her 1930s wedding gown.
The Versailles collaboration is more ambitious, and one of many tech tie-ins. Might the royal palace be stretching itself too thin?
“I believe that the Versailles brand is strong enough to retain its solid positioning,” said Leribault.
“It may sound arrogant, but the reality is that we are not about to dissolve into the few experimentations that we do.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Farah Nayeri
Photographs by: James Hill
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