The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
Samsung and Google turn four US museums into conversational Galaxy AI tours
Galaxy S25 Edge plus Gemini Live made exhibits talk back across four US museums — 2M+ interactions, a 2026 Webby Award.
Samsung Electronics · Google
What it had to solve
US museums faced a relevance gap — attendance down 20% and 64% of Gen Z finding museum experiences unengaging — while Samsung and Google wanted people to experience Galaxy AI in the real world rather than read about it in specs.
How it works
Museums were losing the audiences they most wanted: attendance had declined 20% and 64% of Gen Z found museum experiences unengaging, according to Cheil USA's case study. Meanwhile Samsung and Google had an AI assistant, Gemini Live, that needed to be felt rather than explained.
The idea was to stop treating the museum as a place you read and start treating it as a place you talk. Samsung placed Galaxy S25 Edge devices into the visitor journey at four US institutions — Space Center Houston, the Natural History Museum, the Intrepid Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art — where visitors could ask exhibits questions aloud and get real-time spoken answers.
The execution made the visit feel like a game. Guests registered at a kiosk for randomly assigned space-themed usernames, completed a guided Gemini Live tutorial, then followed prompts through the galleries with a progress map, leaderboards and prizes. 3D visuals built with curators and CGI artists let statues and artefacts explain themselves, and AI personalisation delivered the experience in more than 20 languages.
The result was 2 million+ interactions between visitors and exhibits, 7,500 email sign-ups that extended engagement beyond the visit, and a shift institutions described as moving from reading placards to conversing with collections. The 2026 Webby Awards gave the activation its award for Best Immersive Technology Innovation.
Why it lands
- Placing the phone inside the museum journey made Gemini Live the natural way to ask questions, so the AI demo was also the visitor experience.
- Gamification — usernames, maps, leaderboards, prizes — gave visitors a reason to complete the whole tour, keeping them engaged with the device for the full visit.
- Building the content with curators and in 20+ languages kept the experience credible as education rather than a tech stunt.
- Four major institutions and a summer-long calendar gave Samsung a real-world proof point that no spec sheet could match.
What it did
Cheil USA reports more than 2 million visitor-exhibit interactions, 7,500 email sign-ups captured by the app, and institution leaders noting visitors explored collections in new ways. The activation won the 2026 Webby Award for Best Immersive Technology Innovation.
What you can take
A product demo works hardest when it upgrades an experience people already love: make the device the gateway, not the subject, and audiences use the feature long enough to believe in it.
Since then
The tour ran through summer 2025 from its July 31 kick-off at Space Center Houston, expanding to museums in Los Angeles, Dallas and New York, and its results (2M+ interactions, 7,500 sign-ups) became Cheil USA's published evidence that conversational AI could close museums' relevance gap with younger audiences. The Webby Awards honoured it as Best Immersive Technology Innovation in 2026.
Sources
- Samsung and Google Take Galaxy S25 Edge, Gemini Live on Tour
- The Reimagined Museum Experience — Samsung × Google case study
- 30th Annual Webby Awards Announce 2026 Winners
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