OpenAI

Awakening Sleeping Beauties at The Met

2026-02-25 · 00:00 UTC ·1 min read

Brief

OpenAI's collaboration with The Met’s Costume Institute produced a custom 'Chat with Natalie' installation for the 'Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion' exhibit (blog published 2026-02-25). The team curated archival letters, newspapers, and documents and applied custom instructions to OpenAI’s latest language model to create an authentic 1930s persona for Natalie Potter (whose 1931 wedding dress is featured), while retaining ChatGPT-style safety controls.

Why it matters

OpenAI partnered with The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute to create a 'Chat with Natalie' experience for the 'Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion' exhibit; the blog post was published 2026-02-25 and centers on Natalie Potter and her 1931 wedding dress.

Key details

  • The team curated a dataset of letters, newspaper articles, and historical documents and used OpenAI’s most advanced language model with custom instructions to generate an in-character chat; the system uses the same safety mechanisms as ChatGPT.
  • Museum historians and curators collaborated on the project to ensure historical accuracy and respectful presentation, enabling in-gallery visitors to interact directly with an AI-driven historical persona.
Source evidence

title: Awakening Sleeping Beauties at The Met
contenttype: article
publication: OpenAI
published: 2026-02-25T00:00:00
sourceurl: https://openai.com/index/the-met-museum

word_count: 256

Collaborating with The Met to Awaken “Sleeping Beauties” with AI

At OpenAI, we believe AI can enrich our lives by making them more creative and beautiful. Our recent collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute for their exhibit "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" showcases this potential.

Through this partnership, we created a custom chat experience to bring the world of Natalie Potter, a New York socialite from the early 20th century, to life. Visitors can explore her 1931 wedding dress and engage with an AI representation of Natalie to learn about her life, wedding, and era.

To build the experience, we worked with the museum’s digital team to curate a dataset of letters, newspaper articles, and historical documents. Leveraging OpenAI’s most advanced language model with custom instructions based on these sources, we created a custom chat experience that responds authentically to Natalie’s character and time period. This collaborative effort with the museum’s historians and curators ensures the AI is both helpful and respectful of the historical content, while giving the museum-goers a more active role in the exhibit. The "Chat with Natalie" experience incorporates the same safety mechanisms as ChatGPT, ensuring safe and appropriate interactions for all.

While there is still work to do to achieve a world where everyone can benefit from AI, collaborations like this push us towards that ideal. Examples like this highlight the potential for AI to drive human progress, and showcase how AI can be a tool to enhance how we think, create and experience the world around us.