AI is moving fast. But for museums, the real question is not speed. It is direction: how do you use AI to deepen understanding, expand access, and protect the integrity of cultural knowledge?

That is what we explored in New Delhi, at the India AI Impact Summit, alongside OpenAI and the Sanskriti Foundation, through an activation at the Sanskriti Museum of Indian Terracotta.

Why this matters for museums and cultural venues?

For years, digital mediation has often meant a tradeoff. Either you deliver rich content that stays fixed, or you build interactive experiences that can be complex to deploy and hard to maintain.

Visitor expectations are changing. People do not just want information. They want to ask their own questions, follow their own curiosity, and engage at their own pace.

When it is properly framed and governed, conversational AI opens a new path: mediation that feels like dialogue, not a monologue. The museum remains in control of the narrative, but the visitor gets agency.

A real world pilot at the Sanskriti Museum

As part of this collaboration, ten terracotta sculptures from the museum’s permanent collection were integrated into an AI powered mediation journey. Four were presented at Travancore Palace during a live demonstration, and six remain accessible on site to extend the experience beyond the event.

The visitor journey is deliberately simple:

• a QR code next to the artwork
• a scan from the visitor’s phone
• an instant, web based conversation, with no app to download

From that point on, the visitor leads. They can ask about technique, historical context, symbolism, influences, or usage, and go as deep as they want.

A frictionless, multilingual conversational guide

The experience is available in Hindi and English.

That matters because adoption is never only about innovation. It is about removing friction. If a tool asks for effort, the visitor drops it. If the tool disappears into the experience, curiosity takes over.

This format brings three advantages together:

• more immersive than a classic audio guide
• more flexible than scheduled guided tours
• more engaging than even the best written wall label

In other words, mediation becomes something you do with the artwork, not something you consume next to it.

Can you innovate without compromising scientific integrity?

In cultural institutions, AI is never just a technical choice. It is an editorial and institutional one.

A conversational guide only creates value if it is built on strong content governance. In this project, the knowledge base relies on sources validated by the museum’s teams. The AI expands access to that knowledge without replacing curators or mediators.

This approach was central to the discussions on site, with Ronnie Chatterji (Chief Economist at OpenAI), Marion Carré (Ask Mona co founder and President), and Varun Jain (Managing Trustee at the Sanskriti Foundation). The focus was clear: broaden audiences, support research, and create deeper interactions, while keeping trust and rigor non negotiable.

A clear international signal: culture belongs in the AI conversation

Ask Mona’s presence at the global AI summit in New Delhi sends a simple message. Culture is not on the sidelines of AI. It is one of the places where AI must be held to the highest standards.

Because museums do not just distribute content. They protect knowledge, contextualize narratives, and build trust. These are exactly the dimensions that should shape the standards of tomorrow.

What if your museum chose dialogue too?

This project confirms a broader shift: digital mediation is entering a new era that is interactive, personalized, multilingual, and measurable.

If you want to explore what a conversational guide could look like for your collections, with clear editorial control and scientific rigor, let’s talk.