Bringing stories to life: Tellme enhances visitor attractions with AI

Although many sectors have undergone rapid digital transformation, driven first by the pandemic and more recently by the boom in generative AI, UK visitor experiences have remained largely unchanged.  

Younger and more tech-savvy audiences expect to be digitally engaged, and are increasingly turning to online sources, including GenAI, to add another layer of information during their visits. Yet these external interactions lack the contextual nuance and storytelling that attractions work hard to deliver, resulting in missed opportunities for deeper engagement and visitor satisfaction. 

Tellme is a UK startup offering visitor attractions a way to connect with audiences and deliver enhanced experiences through an AI-powered app. The browser-based web app uses computer vision to recognise what a visitor is looking at in real time, letting them ask questions and receive personalised, conversational explanations in their preferred language.  

By participating in Digital Catapult’s High Growth AI Accelerator for the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme, UK startup Tellme gained access to computational power, technical and industry expertise, and valuable strategic guidance to help accelerate the commercial readiness of its solution.  

The Tellme team’s aim is to present a cost-effective way for venues to modernise their visitor offering and attract broader audiences, while providing an AI content management tool that enables attractions to oversee and shape AI responses, ensuring accuracy and alignment with their brand, values and objectives. The accelerator programme gave Tellme a clear timeframe and structure to push its prototype to a point where it could actually be used in a live environment, as well as enabling it to test with real audiences in a live environment. 

Working with Digital Catapult experts and industry challenge owners, Merlin Entertainments, Tellme could address technical, commercial and strategic needs through holistic diagnosis sessions. With tailored, hands-on support, it could accelerate data and product readiness; and develop and improve its product, technical, commercial and ethical roadmaps.  

As part of the programme, the Tellme team attended workshops and masterclasses covering diverse topics, including data readiness and maturity, regulatory compliance, and ethical best practices.  

• The team found the session involving the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent authority on data protection and privacy, and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), the government body responsible for IP rights, to be particularly valuable. Data protection and regulatory considerations around AI can be difficult for early-stage startups to navigate, while understanding IP strategy around AI systems is not straightforward — professional advice in this area can be quite expensive for startups, and this session and follow-up discussion helped Tellme to clarify some options and considerations for protecting its technology.  

• The team found that the Digital Catapult & huglondon brand sprint workshop prompted reflection on brand and positioning, and encouraged wider thinking about the direction and strategy of the business. 

• Finally, the showcase demonstration event enabled it to present progress to industry representatives and customers, putting all the team had learned from the pitch workshop into practice.  

Tellme is an Al-powered platform reimagining how people experience visitor attractions. By combining the latest Al technologies, including computer vision and generative Al, it enables visitors to interact with their surroundings in entirely new ways.  You can visit their website by clicking here and their LinkedIn by clicking here.