The Living Museum

The Living Museum is an experimental web interface that uses AI to make the British Museum's online collection more interactive. It was built as a project to show how generative AI could change the way visitors engage with museum objects, both at home and in a gallery. Visitors can search the collection using natural language and use the results to curate personalized exhibits. The site also uses large language models to bring artifacts to life, so that a visitor can learn about an object and its history through dialogue rather than reading a static label. The home page invites users to discover artifacts, listen to their stories and create their own exhibits. The site is aimed at museum enthusiasts, students, educators and anyone curious about history, as well as people exploring how conversational AI could replace or extend the traditional audio guide. It is a personal project by Jonathan Talmi, dated October 2024, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the British Museum. Content comes from the museum's collection database, shared under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 license, and derivative works created on the site carry the same license. No pricing is published and the site presents no paid plans or sign up requirement on its public pages.