Vatican unveils AI services for St. Peter’s Basilica ahead of Jubilee

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican launched on Monday new Artificial Intelligence-enabled services for St Peter’s Basilica, allowing virtual access to its Renaissance-era architectural treasures for all and enhanced tours for visitors.

The new experiences were unveiled in time for the Catholic Church’s Holy Year or Jubilee celebrations in 2025, which come around every quarter of a century. 

“St. Peter’s is like a starry sky on a summer night: you remain enchanted by its splendour,” said St Peter’s archpriest Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, enthusing that the new tools would act like a telescope or spaceship for better viewing.

Working with tech firm Microsoft and Iconem, a company that specialises in digitalisation of heritage sites, the Vatican launched a new interactive website, a digital replica of the basilica and two AI-enabled exhibitions.

Some 40,000-50,000 people visit the Basilica daily.

A 3D model of St. Peter’s was built scanning the basilica using drones, cameras and lasers. AI algorithms pieced together, elaborated and completed the data.

Drones flew at night for 4 weeks, taking over 400,000 photographs and collecting the equivalent of a 6 km-high column of DVDs in data. Data from the digital twin will also be instrumental in preservation and restoration work.

“We are taking St. Peter’s not just to the world but to a new generation of people, in a language that is more accessible for the times we live in,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told reporters. 

Pope Francis has acknowledged that AI can broaden access to knowledge but has repeatedly warned that it must only be used in an ethical way, to benefit humanity.

“The correct and constructive use of (AI’s) potential, which is certainly useful but can be ambivalent, depends on us,” he said on Monday when the project was presented to him.