MCN 2026

This session rapidly introduces 15 experimental visitor-facing GenAI prototypes we developed and tested at The Met over the course of six months. These sketches are the product of The Met’s inaugural “Technologist in Residence,” a position focused on quickly and iteratively exploring emerging tech with our visitors. The goal of these past six months was to explore the potential for AI in the on-site experience: what’s working, what’s not, and what questions does this work raise—within the organization, and with our visitors.

Our goal is to move beyond theory and provide a practical library of examples that other museums can use to inform their own AI experiments, and that show what is currently possible with GenAI. We’ll cover novel ideas, tracking nascent visitor AI backlash, small successes and outright failures.

The prototypes cover a wide range of use-cases across the museum experience, including physical navigation, tools for close-looking single artworks, collaborative games, and experiments connecting art to the outside world. For each prototype we will share our most important findings, including what visitors found useful, what they ignored, where the technology failed, and where great ideas are butting up with current technical limitations.

We will end our presentation by taking a step back and sharing our large-scale conclusions, open questions, and next steps towards a sustainable implementation of our findings.