Surrealist Artist Salvador Dalí Comes Back to Life Through AI on the 30th Anniversary of His Death

The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, in partnership with Goodby Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, is getting ready to unveil “Dalí Lives”, a fantastic AI replication of Salvador Dalí that uses deepfake learning (and a similarly built actor) to recreate the surrealist artist’s voice, manner, facial structure and words. The museum has put out a couple of teaser videos showing how real it looks.

The Museum began this immersive project by collecting and sharing hundreds of interviews, quotes, and existing archival footage from the prolific artist. GS&P used these extensive materials to train an AI algorithm to “learn” aspects of Dali’s face, then looked for an actor with the same general physical characteristics of Dali’s body. The AI then generates a version of Dali’s likeness to match the actor’s face and expressions. To educate visitors while engaging with “Dali Lives,” the Museum used authentic writings from Dali himself – coupled with dynamic present-day messages – reenacted by the actor.

This surreal experience will debut in April 2019, the 30th anniversary of Dalí’s death, which also makes it eerily prophetic, as Dalí once wrote shortly before his death, “Si muero, no muero por todo,” or “If I die, I won’t completely die”.

Salvador Dali AI I Am Back

via Boing Boing

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.