Vatican, Microsoft create AI-generated St. Peter’s Basilica to allow virtual visits, log damage

The Vatican and Microsoft in November unveiled a digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica that uses artificial intelligence to explore one of the world’s most important monuments while helping the Holy See manage visitor flows and identify conservation problems. Using 400,000 high-resolution digital photographs, taken with drones, cameras, and lasers over four weeks when no one was in the basilica, the digital replica went online alongside two new on-site exhibits to provide visitors—real and virtual—with an interactive experience. “It is literally one of the most technologically advanced and sophisticated projects of its kind that has ever been pursued,” Microsoft’s president Brad Smith told a Vatican press conference. The project has been launched ahead of the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, a holy year in which more than 30 million pilgrims are expected to pass through the basilica’s Holy Door, on top of the 50,000 who visit on a normal day. “Everyone, really everyone should feel welcome in this great house,” Pope Francis told Smith and members of the project’s development teams at an audience. The digital platform allows visitors to reserve entry times to the basilica, a novelty for one of the world’s most visited monuments that regularly has an hours-long line of tourists waiting to get in. But the heart of the project is the creation of a digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica through advanced photogrammetry and artificial intelligence that allows anyone to “visit” the church and learn about its history. The ultra-precise 3D replica, developed in collaboration with digital preservation company Iconem, incorporates 22 petabytes of data—enough to fill five million DVDs—Smith said. The images have already identified structural damage and signs of deterioration, such as missing mosaic pieces, cracks, and fissures invisible to the naked eye, with a speed and precision far beyond human capabilities. Pope Francis has called for the ethical use of AI and used his annual World Message of Peace this year to urge an international treaty to regulate it, arguing that technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality, and forgiveness was too great. This article was provided by The Associated Press.