Famous painting of Leonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa is all set to become a live portrait which will express and respond by smiling, puckering her lips and following viewers’ movements with her eyes.It employs artificial intelligence and has been developed by a team of 40 French technicians and artists, who worked on the project for nearly a year. A motion sensing device used in interactive video games is being used in the ‘Living Mona Lisa’.
It picks up spectators’ movements and their images, allowing her “to react depending on her mood”, said Jean-Claude Heudin, the head of the Paris Internet and Multimedia Institute, which developed the artificial intelligence system.Louvre museum in Paris displays the actual painting of Mona Lisa, but the digital versions will be produced and marketed in different sizes and formats. Florent Aziosmanoff, who created the interactive version, said the idea was to convert the Mona Lisa into a modern format, ‘The Telegraph’ reported. Aziosmanoff cited the reason of Mona Lisa being the best known and one of the iconic characters in history.”Now she can sense changes in her surroundings. Leonardo da Vinci tried to make her come alive, so it’s appropriate that we’ve taken his intentions a few steps further,” said Aziosmanoff.
The digital paintings will go on sale in autumn for around a few hundred euros while a miniature version can be placed on a pendant and surrounded by jewels.
It was acknowledged by Mr Heudin that the project was crazy but he was attracted to it as it could serve as a prototype.