The Vatican and Microsoft on Monday launched a digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica using artificial intelligence to explore one of the world’s most important monuments while helping the Holy See manage visitor flow and identify conservation issues.
Using 400,000 high-resolution digital images, taken with drones, cameras and lasers during four weeks without anyone in the basilica, the digital replica goes online and two new local exhibits to offer visitors—real and virtual—interactions. experience.
“It’s actually one of the most technologically advanced and most complex projects ever made,” Microsoft president Brad Smith told a Vatican press conference.
The project was launched ahead of the Vatican Jubilee of 2025, a holy year in which more than 30 million pilgrims are expected to pass through the Holy Door of the basilica, more than 50,000 who visit on a typical day.
“Everyone, in fact everyone should feel welcome in this great house,” Pope Francis told Smith and members of the project’s development teams in an audience Monday.
The digital platform allows visitors to save time to enter the basilica, a new feature of the world’s most visited monument that always has an hour-long line of visitors waiting to enter.
But the core of this project is the creation of a digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica by using advanced photogrammetry and artificial intelligence that allows anyone to “visit” the church and learn about its history.
The highly accurate 3D replica, created in collaboration with digital storage company Iconem, includes 22 petabytes of data—enough to fill five million DVDs—Smith said.
Images have already identified structural damage and signs of deterioration, such as missing mosaic pieces, cracks and crevices that are invisible to the naked eye, with speed and accuracy beyond human ability.
Francis called for the ethical use of AI and used his message for the year of world peace this year to promote an international agreement to control it, arguing that technology that lacked the human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness was too great.
On Monday, he thanked the Microsoft team and the staff of the basilica who are in charge of the project and marveled at how modern technology is helping to spread the ancient faith and preserve a piece of the nation’s world, which celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2026.
“This house of prayer for all people has been entrusted to us by those who preceded us in faith and apostolic service,” he told Smith and the team. Therefore, it is a gift and a duty to take care of it, spiritually and physically, even with the latest technology.”
Smith declined to give a price tag for Microsoft’s investment in the project, saying only that it was “huge” and that it was the result of Francis’ 2018 initiative to unite tech companies to promote racially sensitive AI.
He said Microsoft has done similar AI projects at Mont Saint-Michel in France and Ancient Olympia, Greece.
The Associated Press’s religious coverage is supported by a partnership between AP and The Conversation US, with a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. AP is solely responsible for this content.
-Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press
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