A digital avatar of Ignacy Łukasiewicz, equipped with artificial intelligence technology, has begun its public life. A digital reconstruction of the personality of the Polish inventor was presented at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. It is a unique undertaking on a European scale.

By reviving its patron, the Łukasiewicz Research Network decided to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth. A team of animators and machine learning experts worked for months on the image, voice and character of the figure. The work involved speech recognition technologies and an advanced process of training the character’s voice based on a knowledge base developed by neural networks. In collaboration with Polish studio Juice, Łukasiewicz’s staff developed an extensive knowledge base for Ignacy.

“At the Łukasiewicz Research Network, we like to experiment, and the results of our encounters with artificial intelligence have been very satisfying in this case. Ignacy was a completely unusual character – a man who combined science and business with great success. John Rockefeller’s associates used to come to the Podkarpacie region to learn about Łukasiewicz’s know-how in oil extraction and distillation. I am glad that he is the first Pole to gain a second, digital life”, said Piotr Dardziński, President of the Łukasiewicz Research Network.

The avatar is presented on a screen the size of an adult human being. His interlocutor can sit in an armchair and ask him questions to which Ignacy is trying to find answers. Unlike the videonarrators found in museums, Ignacy provides answers in real time. He is prepared to talk about his scientific and business achievements, his private life, his history and the contemporary world.

Ignacy Łukasiewicz was a Polish scientist, pharmacist and entrepreneur, founder of the world’s first oil mine, inventor of the paraffin lamp, and pioneer of the oil industry in Europe.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński