Learning from visitors: How AI brings museums closer to their audiences

When visitors speak to an AI guide, museums hear for the first time what moves their audience about a particular exhibit – in the visitors’ own words and across every visit. Previously, this was based on surveys and anecdotes; now, immediate, unsolicited feedback is generated.

These questions reveal where interest lies and where content is lacking. This allows a museum to tailor its content accordingly and, over time, cover an ever-increasing proportion of what its visitors are actually asking about. This provides evidence of the museum’s impact, which curators can bring to discussions with funding bodies and sponsoring organisations.

For listening to turn into a genuine dialogue, more than just a chatbot is needed. Curated narrative frameworks lead to more engaged visitors, whose questions become meaningful in the first place. Drawing on Musa’s projects, the talk demonstrates how this is achieved. The approach is based on a paper that Musa presented in October at Fantastic Futures 2026 in Washington.