Hélène Alonso

Hélène Alonso is the founder of WonderWay, a voice-first AI companion designed for cultural exploration in museums and historic places.

With a 20+ year career in museum innovation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, Liberty Science Center and the American Museum of Natural History, her work focuses on creating interactive interfaces that deepen curiosity, expand access across languages, and preserve curatorial integrity.

Hélène has led multiple award-recognized digital initiatives in cultural institutions and is currently piloting WonderWay in partnership with the MIT Museum.

Hélène Alonso will be speaking at the Museum AI Summit 2026:

The Museum as Experimental Space

What happens when museum interpretation becomes conversational?

At the MIT Museum, a live gallery experiment tested a multilingual conversational AI designed to extend the curatorial voice beyond wall labels and audio guides. Visitors could ask questions, explore ideas, and engage in dialogue about the exhibition content in real time.

In collaboration with MIT researchers, the project compared visitor behavior across conversational AI, traditional audio guides, and unguided visits.

Join us to discover what changed, what did not, and what this reveals about the future of interpretation, access, and visitor engagement.