Ai4ar: An ai-based mobile application for the automatic generation of ar contents

Augmented reality (AR) is the process of using technology to superimpose images, text or sounds on top of what a person can already see. Art galleries and museums started to develop AR applications to increase engagement and provide an entirely new kind of exploration experience. However, the creation of contents results a very time consuming process, thus requiring an ad-hoc development for each painting to be increased. In fact, for the creation of an AR experience on any painting, it is necessary to choose the points of interest, to create digital content and then to develop the application. If this is affordable for the great masterpieces of an art gallery, it would be impracticable for an entire collection. In this context, the idea of this paper is to develop AR applications based on Artificial Intelligence. In particular, automatic captioning techniques are the key core for the implementation of AR application for improving the user experience in front of a painting or an artwork in general. The study has demonstrated the feasibility through a proof of concept application, implemented for hand held devices, and adds to the body of knowledge in mobile AR application as this approach has not been applied in this field before.