Salvador Dalí Regains His Voice To ‘Talk’ To You Via A Lobster Telephone

Image courtesy of Goodby Silverstein & Partners

A surreal conversation awaits at the Dalí Museum, ahead of what would have been Salvador Dalí’s 120th birthday on May 11. The museum in St Petersburg, Florida, is inviting visitors to “Ask Dalí” and talk to a lifelike, artificial intelligence recreation of the Spanish painter himself simply by picking up a lobster phone.

Debuting after a successful preview at the renowned SXSW conference, Ask Dalí marries the artist’s eccentric genius with some of the latest in machine-learning technology. Crafted by advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), the experience utilizes OpenAI’s GPT-4 and ElevenLabs’ Eleven Multilingual V2 models. These tools are trained on a rich dataset of Dalí’s own writings and archival audio, producing responses that echo his distinctive voice, flamboyant personality, and whimsical humor.

Image courtesy of Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Guests engage with the AI by speaking into a telephone modeled after Dalí’s iconic Lobster Phone. They can pose any query—whether seeking insights into the artist’s surreal imagery or his thoughts on contemporary matters.

During a demonstration, Hank Hine, director of the Dalí Museum, tested the system by asking what one should be sure to see when visiting the museum. The AI, channeling Dalí’s lyrical style, recommended, “In the labyrinth of the imagination that unfurls within the Dalí Museum of St. Petersburg, one must seek the melting clocks in The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, where time drips like a dream refusing to be contained.”

The teaser video features “Dalí” warmly welcoming fans to dial up some wisdom: “Hi, I’m Salvador Dalí, and you can ask me anything. Just pick up my lobster phone.” In one interaction, when questioned about the nature of his melting clocks, his digital persona responds, “Think not of the clocks as merely melting; picture them as a vast dream.”

This isn’t the museum’s first foray into AI-assisted exhibits. Following the success of Dalí Lives in 2019, which brought the artist’s persona to life on screens throughout the museum, and the Dream Tapestry in 2023, where AI helped visitors create digital paintings from descriptions of their dreams, Ask Dalí is the latest in a series of innovative intersections of art and technology inspired by Dalí’s own fascination with new mediums.

Image courtesy of Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Jeff Goodby, co-founder of GS&P, reflects on the project’s alignment with Dalí’s own legacy: “Dalí was fascinated by the latest tools and technologies of his era and continually explored various artistic media,” he notes.

“Ask Dalí provides a delightful new way to interact with machine-learning technology. Dalí’s poetic writings, in an imaginative style all his own, are the basis of the training, which provides dynamic and unpredictable answers to visitors’ questions.”

Image courtesy of Goodby Silverstein & Partners

[via Goodby Silverstein & Partners, images courtesy]