A survey conducted by the Dalí Museum revealed that visitors want more digital experiences. According to Hank Hine, the executive director of the Dalí Museum, visitors of the museum want access to art. They want a way in to better connect with the masterpieces by understanding the personality of the artist. That’s especially important for an artist like Dalí, who used to say that “more important than my art, is my personality.” So, we created a technology-driven experience to offer its visitors a chance to go face-to-face with the surrealist master, and get a glimpse of his larger-than-life personality while furthering their understanding of his art. Furthermore, the museum wanted to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Salvador Dalí’s death. So, we used the controversial deepfake technique in service of art for the first time to bring the artist back to give visitors a personal tour of the museum.

Dalí Lives brings back the master of surrealism to talk about his own masterpieces at the Dalí Museum. An interactive experience designed to give each museumgoer a a different insight into the art of Salvador Dalí. Interactive screens—specially designed on the basis of Dalí’s height—were installed inside the galleries, giving a life-sized Dalí the opportunity to present his paintings to the visitors in an immersive, personal and highly educational way. To make the experience even more unforgettable, Dalí knew the weather, the date, read the local newspaper, and even took selfies with fans and sent them via text.

The experience was created exclusively for the Dalí Museum, with the goal of offering visitors a new way to connect with the artist’s masterpieces by getting face-to-face with him and experience first-hand his larger-than-life personality. Dalí himself announced he was back with three trailers launched on January 23, 2019—exactly 30 years after the day of his death. We recreated Dalí’s voice with meticulous sound engineering and his personality by curating real quotes from letters. The experience was designed to give each visitor a different glimpse at Dalí’s larger-than-life personality. And on the way out, Dalí invited visitors for a selfie. To get their picture sent to their phone, visitors had to text to Dalí, creating a CRM platform for years to go and providing them with a souvenir they were eager—and proud—to share.

On the 30th anniversary of Salvador Dalí’s death, we brought him back using an artificial intelligence face-swap technique called “deepfake”. To recreate Dalí’s likeness, we trained a neural network that analyzed over 6,000 frames of archival footage. Over 1,000 hours of machine learning were necessary. We recreated Dalí’s personality using only the painter’s own words extracted from old interviews, books and hand-written letters collected for over 35 years and verified by the museum’s curators. We recreated Dalí’s voice through meticulous sound engineering. Thanks to our digital recreation of Dalí, visitors could hear about the art from the artist himself for the first time, in a very personal way. Interactive screens allowed visitors to get face to face with the master. Connected to several APIs, the experience surprised users in unexpected ways, like when Dalí opened an umbrella if it started to rain. Users found Dalí reading the local newspaper – updated daily to reproduce each day’s exact cover. On the way out, Dalí took selfies with the visitors and sent them via text. In total, 125 interactive videos were created, with 190,512 possible combinations, so every user could have a different experience and get to know different facets of Dalí’s larger-than-life personality.

The return of Dalí made headlines all over the world. On the 30th anniversary of Dalí’s death, the master of surrealism became a trending topic on Twitter. The trailers in which Dalí announced his return were seen in over 100 countries. Over 25,000 people experienced Dalí Lives in the first month.