London Transport Museum Debuts AI Poster Speaking 60 Languages

The London Transport Museum in Covent Garden launches an AI-powered Digital Museum Guide in June 2026, turning a 1927 Art Deco poster by Frederick Charles Herrick into a conversational interface. The project, presented at the Museum AI Summit 2026, uses GPT-realtime and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to deliver curator-approved answers in 60 languages for under £10,000. Built with Microsoft, Reply group (Avvio Reply and Open Reply), and Transport for London, the system animates the poster into a talking portrait while keeping knowledge locked to museum-curated content. Engagement lead Wesley Salton, project lead Dave Thomas, knowledge base shaper Georgia Morley, project manager Ru Rowe, TfL Chief Data Officer Lauren Sager Weinstein, and Technology Advisory Manager Chi Ukachuku contributed. The guide operates at £6–£8 per hour, uses Azure AI Search and guardrails, and allows staff to update content live. It addresses multilingual access gaps, as most on-site content was previously English-only. The poster, titled 'Hearing the Riches of London,' is part of a five-poster series and resides in the Global Poster Gallery.