Introducing Chatbot – new computer program simulates conversation with visitors in Brian Jungen: Friendship Centre

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Brian Jungen: Friendship Centre

Chatbot FAQs

Introducing HARK (Humanish Art Robot, ‘Kay), the AGO’s first chatbot! In the exhibition Brian Jungen: Friendship Centre, we will be piloting HARK, testing how it works and how its content resonates with our visitors.

What is exactly is a chatbot, anyway?

A chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users. Its conversations are a bit like texting a friend: talk, reply, talk, reply. You may have used one without even knowing it: like that chat box that pops up in the corner of your favourite online shop’s website.

So what’s HARK going to talk about?

Unlike other chatbots you may have encountered, HARK isn’t a customer service chatbot, it’s an interpretive chatbot, designed to talk with visitors about artworks in Brian Jungen: Friendship Centre. HARK loves talking about art!

Why did you decide to create a chatbot?

We’ve been hearing from our visitors in our audience research that they are looking for ways to customize what information they receive about artworks. Creating a chatbot allows us to experiment with this. In our early testing with visitors in March, visitors told us they liked the chatbot’s conversational tone (“like talking to a friend”) and how easy it was to use.

How can our visitors access HARK?

HARK is a web-based experience. That means visitors just need to visit ago.ca/hark using their personal mobile device and the chatbot will launch. It is designed to launch automatically; but if it doesn’t, just tap the red speech bubble icon in the lower right hand corner of the web page.

How do visitors use this chatbot?

For this pilot, HARK will share a message and then there will be “buttons” that pop up just below the message; visitors then tap the buttons to choose what they’d like to learn about next. This continues until the visitor chooses to stop or has explored all the content about that artwork. We are envisioning this as an in-exhibition experience. Of course, if anyone would like to explore HARK on their desktop, it is a web-based experience, so it will function. But it’s always nicest to be looking at the artwork in person!

Where will visitors find HARK in the Brian Jungen: Friendship Centre exhibition?

There are four chatbot “stops” in the exhibition. They include:

  • Friendship Centre
  • The Blanket series
  • Cetology
  • The totem series: 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010

There will be chatbot labels with the artwork labels to signal you can talk to HARK about this artwork.

 Who made this chatbot?

We did! Interpretive planners have been wanting to try a chatbot for a few years now, and excitingly, technology has advanced that makes this more accessible and possible than ever. AGO interpretive planners and the Digital Team worked closely together to create, test and launch this pilot. We used Google’s Dialogflow for the back end, and Kommunicate for the front end. And the Digital Team has been great at creating custom code within these programs to fix bugs and to create the kind of functionality that we’re looking for.

If I have questions about HARK, who should I talk to?

Please reach out to Shiralee Hudson Hill, PP&L and/or Catherine Thomson, Digital.