Case Study

From myth to AI: Sibilla, the digital guide of Gran Paradiso

The Gran Paradis Foundation has launched Sibilla, a digital assistant that enriches the experience of visitors to the Gran Paradiso National Park thanks to generative artificial intelligence.

The challenge

Make the vast natural and cultural heritage of Gran Paradiso easily, interactively, and responsibly accessible.

Scenario

A park that looks to the future

The Gran Paradiso Foundation has been promoting the Gran Paradiso area for years through cultural and naturalistic initiatives, enhancing the landscape and cultural heritage with events, festivals, and educational activities. With the Sibilla project, the aim was to take a further step by introducing innovative digital tools capable of reaching an increasingly broad and diverse audience.

The objective was twofold: on one hand, to enrich the visitor experience with a digital assistant capable of responding in a conversational yet knowledgeable manner to questions about nature, wildlife, excursions, and events; on the other hand, to concretely experiment with the use of generative artificial intelligence in naturalistic and cultural tourism, verifying its benefits in terms of accessibility, engagement, and sustainability.

The solution

A welcoming digital presence

To achieve these goals, with the support of Reply, Sibilla was developed, a conversational digital assistant based on generative artificial intelligence. Unlike common algorithms built solely on linguistic models, often lacking a body and visual identity, Sibilla was designed as a real presence.

She was given a face, a voice, and even the uniform of the Fondation Gran Paradis, transforming her into a true “team member,” capable of welcoming visitors with empathy and professionalism.

Sibilla is accessible both online and through an interactive totem installed at the visitor center of Rhêmes-Notre-Dame, and can communicate in multiple languages using both voice and text. With a colloquial yet professional tone, it manages to address a wide and diverse audience, providing timely and reliable answers.

“We chose to call her Sibilla because this name has its roots in myth. The Sibyls were prophetic figures, bearers of sometimes enigmatic, always evocative truths. It will be up to the visitor to decide whether to follow her advice.” explains Luisa Vuillermoz, Director of Fondation Gran Paradis.

How we did it

Sibilla: much more than an algorithm

The realisation of Sibilla was made possible thanks to a close collaboration between Fondation Gran Paradis, Reply, and Touch Revolution, which brought together complementary skills: from defining requirements and gathering content curated by the Foundation, to software and AI development led by Reply, and finally to the design of the physical totem entrusted to Touch Revolution.

From a technological standpoint, Sibilla is based on a cloud architecture managed on Google Cloud, with Google Gemini as the reference language model for generative artificial intelligence services. Knowledge management has been structured through a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) approach, which allows for generating responses based on validated sources – such as the Foundation's website, materials from the Gran Paradiso Film Festival, and publications from experts – integrating them, when necessary, with contextualised and declared web searches to ensure transparency and accountability.

To make the interaction more natural, generative AI technologies have been combined with a digital avatar, trained to reproduce realistic expressions and lip movements. Thanks to HeyGen, Sibilla takes on the face and identity of a real employee of the Foundation, thus becoming a recognisable and welcoming presence. To complete the system, each response has been validated by the Foundation's team of experts, ensuring accuracy, reliability, and full consistency with the project's cultural mission.

The results

A bridge between myth, AI, and sustainable tourism

The project, completed in just four months, represents a bridge that connects cultural roots, technological innovation, and an inclusive vision of tourism. Since its inauguration in July 2025, Sibilla has already recorded about 1,600 conversations and 4,000 questions, demonstrating the ability to engage visitors with rich and personalised interactions. Its presence has not been limited to the totem or the online platform: Sibilla has also been a protagonist on the stage of the 28th Gran Paradiso Film Festival, where she participated as co-host of the opening ceremony. These initial results confirm the value of the project as a concrete tool to make the tourist experience more interactive, accessible, and sustainable, paving the way for new developments in the application of AI to cultural and natural tourism.

Grand Paradis Foundation

Fondation Grand Paradis is dedicated to enhancing and promoting the exceptional natural and cultural heritage of the Aosta Valley valleys within the Gran Paradiso National Park.
Gran Paradiso National Park, the oldest Italian park, protects an area characterised by alpine terrain that features a great variety of environments: larch and fir forests, vast alpine meadows, rocks, and glaciers. The protected area boasts an extraordinary richness of flora and fauna.
Nature and Culture is the philosophy that inspires Fondation Grand Paradis, combining the enhancement of traditions with the potential of new technologies, environmental protection with the joy of experiencing Nature.
Fondation Grand Paradis manages the visitor centers on the Aosta Valley side of the Park, the Paradisia Alpine Botanical Garden, castles and exhibition centers, implements sustainable development projects, creates and offers services, organises activities and animations to discover the characteristics of the territory, and hosts important events such as the Gran Paradiso Film Festival.