Engage with past historical figures with Lithops—an app that uses AI to let you interact with renderings of renowned figures.

If history and travel fascinate you, allow Lithops to momentarily transport you to the past. While you can no longer engage with historical figures in the present day, this AI-powered app uses rendered video narrations to allow you to interact with statues when you’re near their location.

There’s so much more to this app that historians and wanderlusts will love. Make history fun and a part of the present with this inquisitive app. Discover all of its features and what to expect in today’s blog.

Lithops brings stories to life

Explore the past from the present

Reach every corner of the world virtually with Lithops. With the current travel bans to many destinations around the globe, this AI-powered app helps you see fascinating statues and even snap selfies in the location with an augmented background of what the location used to look like.

If you’re a globetrotter, perhaps you love diving into new cultures and seeing fascinating, famous statues. However, if you can’t read other languages, you might encounter difficulties translating scripts to learn more about cultures and landmarks. Fortunately, Lithops makes it possible to learn about the past without a translator.

In fact, this history-themed app adds elements that are often missing from statues: animations, sound, expression, and the ability to capture the passion right from your smartphone.

With just a couple of taps on your phone, you’ll momentarily bring the statue before you to life. So you can feel its presence and personality while you gaze at the physical replica right in front of you.

Some examples of statues in the Lithops app include queen of Egypt Nefertiti, Arab historian Ibn Khaldoun, British physician Elizabeth Anderson, and physicist Albert Einstein. Best of all, many of the statues are digitally reconstructed with added pupils, eyebrows, crowns, spears, or other attributes that are missing. So you can experience an authentic resemblance of the character.

This AI-powered app adds authentic features to virtual statues

How and when Lithops works

Once you download the Lithops app (available on Google Play and Apple), you’ll receive a notification if you’re less than 10 meters from a Lithop. You can then choose to meet the Lithop and hear their story or take a selfie (referred to as Memories) with it right away.

The Memories option is a unique feature where you can augment yourself to the past of your current location and take a selfie where the statue is located. Once you’re happy with your image, you can set it public or private. There’s even the option to share the image directly from the app to your social media.

If you’re within 10 meters of a Lithop, it alerts you

Bring famous statues back to life, digitally

Drawing its inspiration from nature, the name—Lithops—comes from a genus of succulent plants in Aizoaceae. This appreciation for nature and beauty carries its way through to the app’s development. In fact, the statues featured in the app have the same level of beauty and attention to detail as nature.

That’s why the Lithops app aims to provide hope and wisdom to its audience and teach you something new. Going above and beyond, the statues featured in this app come to life through a digital screen, so it’s as if you’re right there with them.

Experience a blast from the past with Lithops

The intelligent AI behind Lithops

Like we mentioned earlier, Lithops uses AI to make its statues realistic and high quality. Most impressively, all of the AI development is designed entirely in-house. Consisting of state-of-the-art units working together to create animations from a single portrait image and a script, it ensures you experience a lifelike rendering of a historical figure.

Moreover, the animations take into consideration blinking, voice tones, head movements, and lip dynamics. Every movement, reaction, and emotion is in sync with the script. Once the team at Lithops develops a script for each statue, they introduce tones and expressions to resemble the original character (which is all gathered from literature).

Overall, connect with historical figures through traveling and step into the past with just the tap of a button. The experience and memories are priceless, and it’s a completely personal experience that’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

Lithops will cover 42 countries, including 118 cities, globally with a wide range of historical figures from many civilizations. You can now back this app on Kickstarter.