Small steps towards a new, brightly coloured digital future. This is the attempt that Rome is making to renew itself and present a more up-to-date image to the tourists who visit the Eternal City, also because last 24th December the Holy Year began, which will attract hordes of pilgrims to the Italian capital, in addition to the usual tourists, with an overall number of visitors expected to exceed 50 million. To keep up with contemporary reality, Julia, Rome’s chatbot, was launched recently. It acts as a virtual assistant designed to assist and help tourists get to know and visit the city. More recently, however, we have Adriano, the first robotic employee of the Italian Public Administration and the first hi-tech tourist guide, who will welcome visitors in the Time of Vibia Sabina and Adriano.

Julia, the virtual assistant for tourists in Rome

In the first case, we are dealing with the official virtual assistant of Rome, who is able to provide up-to-date information on events, transport, museums, restaurants and many other activities in the city. Julia can be accessed via WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and web chat, and many people can talk to her because she interacts in more than 80 languages. At the moment, however, the virtual assistant only communicates in text form. Based on GPT-4o, Julia has been trained with official data from Roma Capitale and other useful sources to broaden her cultural knowledge of the city’s past and present.

The process was carried out in compliance with GDPR, and Julia was created by the partnership between NTT Data, Intellera and Microsoft/OpenAI with the Fondazione per l’Attrazione Roma & Partners. Just under 10 million euros were invested in its development, which allowed Julia to create an archive from which she could find answers to tourists’ questions. It should be noted that the chatbot cannot surf the Internet, but her knowledge of current events and changes in public transport is updated from time to time. Among the institutions that can update Julia with their respective information are Aeroporti di Roma, Trenitalia and Italia for rail transport, the Holy See for religious events, and the American Embassy for visitor assistance.  

During the first phase, Julia received both praise and criticism. The former came for the accuracy of the information regarding flights and other transport, while several users complained about the errors regarding the tourist and historical side of the city. This is a point that needs to be improved, considering the reason why the virtual assistant was created. The remedy will arrive soon with the first of a series of updates, which will be constant over time.

Adriano is the factotum robot

Adriano, the robot that speaks Italian and English when welcoming visitors to the Rome Chamber of Commerce, was created for various reasons and purposes. In addition to expressing himself with his big eyes, Adriano can shake hands and pick up objects. Designed and developed in 18 months with an investment of 137 thousand euros, the robot is the result of collaboration between the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), QBRobotics (a spin-off of the University of Pisa and IIT), La Sapienza University and the startup Babelscape. Adriano moves on two wheels, has a humanoid appearance, including two hands with five fingers each, and is totally autonomous. In the future, Adriano will also become a guide to the temple that bears his name (a very beautiful place that is well worth a visit).

‘Adriano is a pioneering experimental project that we have promoted with the aim of understanding the possible interconnections between robotics and artificial intelligence and how this cross-fertilisation can lead to the creation of tools that are useful for improving people’s quality of life,’ said the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Lorenzo Tagliavanti.

For Giorgio Metta, scientific director of the IIT, Adriano ‘is a significant innovation as it is the first step towards a future in which machines interact naturally with people, supporting and improving the services available to the public’.

Leaving these two innovations aside, it must be said that there is still a lot to be done to raise Rome to the level of cities like London and Paris, symbols of digital innovation in Europe. However, Julia and Adriano are two initiatives that bode well for the future, especially if not only Rome but the whole of Italy understands how important it is to innovate and digitalise services so as to close the gap with other European countries.