Ailias’ deployment at NiCE World highlights how conversational AI is helping organisations make expertise more accessible
Ailias, the UK company specialising in AI Digital Humans for museums, heritage organisations and visitor attractions, has completed a high-profile deployment at NiCE World, demonstrating how conversational AI is evolving beyond technology demonstrations to create richer, more personal visitor experiences.
Commissioned by global customer experience software leader NiCE, Ailias created a photorealistic AI Digital Human of Philipp Heltewig, Chief AI Officer at NiCE, General Manager of NiCE Cognigy and co-founder of Cognigy. Throughout the conference, delegates were able to hold natural, multilingual conversations with the Digital Human while Philipp continued delivering keynote presentations and meeting customers elsewhere at the event.
Although developed for an enterprise technology conference, the project reinforced many of the same principles that museums and visitor attractions are increasingly exploring.
Every organisation has knowledge that visitors value.
In a museum it may be a curator explaining an exhibition, a historian bringing the past to life or a conservator sharing insights that would normally remain behind the scenes. The challenge is that expertise is almost always limited by time, location and availability.
Conversational AI offers a different approach.
Rather than presenting the same information to every visitor, AI Digital Humans enable people to ask their own questions, follow their own curiosity and explore subjects in whatever depth interests them most.
For Adrian Broadway, Founder of Ailias, the similarities between enterprise and heritage environments have become increasingly clear.
“Whether someone is attending a global technology conference or visiting a museum, they’re looking for the same thing. They want to ask questions, satisfy their curiosity and enjoy a conversation that feels personal to them,” he said.
“What changes isn’t the technology. It’s the knowledge being shared.”
The deployment also highlighted the growing importance of personality in visitor engagement.
Beyond visual realism, Philipp’s Digital Human reflected elements of his communication style and interests, creating conversations that felt authentic rather than scripted. Similar techniques can be applied within museums, where historical figures, curators or subject experts can deliver experiences that are both educational and engaging.
Broadway believes one of the biggest lessons from enterprise AI is that people quickly move beyond evaluating the technology itself.
“After watching hundreds of conversations across different deployments, one observation has become remarkably consistent,” he said.
“People spend far less time asking how the AI works than you might expect. Once they’re comfortable with the interaction, they simply begin asking the questions that matter to them. That’s as true in a museum as it is in a conference hall.”
As museums continue looking for new ways to engage increasingly diverse audiences, conversational AI offers opportunities to extend expert knowledge, support multilingual interpretation and create more accessible experiences without replacing the human expertise that remains at the heart of every cultural institution.
Ailias has published a detailed case study exploring the NiCE World deployment and the wider lessons it offers for visitor engagement.
Read the full case study:
https://www.ailias.vip/nice-world-ai-digital-human/
