VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Visitors to Rome will have the opportunity to experience St. Peter’s Basilica in a new way as part of an immersive exhibit, both in person and online, created through a partnership between the Vatican and Microsoft using AI technology.
The ambitious “digital twin” exhibit of the sacred Catholic site where St. Peter is believed to have been buried will also be available on Minecraft Education starting in January.
“When you think about this partnership, I think it’s as extraordinary as the project itself: The oldest organization in the world coming together with the newest technology we have ever seen,” said Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, during a press conference unveiling the project on Monday (Nov. 11).
For three weeks, drones led by the French company Iconem hovered inside and above St. Peter’s Basilica, taking over 400,000 highly detailed pictures of every nook and cranny of the massive structure. AI technology coordinated the drones, which used lasers to detect the exact location of the objects they photographed. The data was collected by state-of-the-art AI processors that used a special algorithm to scan all the pictures and reconstruct the basilica.
Smith said he …