Before Super Bowl, John Madden Hall of Fame bronze bust will tell you stories

During his enshrinement speech at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006, iconic Oakland Raiders coach, NFL analyst, pitchman and video game namesake John Madden, remarked that all the bronze busts commemorating Hall members in Canton, Ohio, secretly talk to each other after dark.

Now, through a combination of conversational artificial intelligence, augmented reality, 3D animation and facial motion capture, fans attending the Super Bowl Experience in Atlanta next week, or who later visit the Hall in Canton, will be able to “converse” with an interactive version of Madden’s bronze bust. 

You’ll launch an app and hold an iOS or Android phone or tablet in front of Madden’s actual bust, and ask your question – “Hey coach, what was it like after Super Bowl XI getting carried off the field?” or “What was it like to coach against Vince Lombardi?” 

Madden’s familiar voice will pipe in, and his face will come to life on your device screen. 

The interactive bust is the work of StatMuse, a 5-year-old San Francisco conversational AI startup backed by Disney. The company handles some of the sports stats questions you might ask Alexa or the Google Assistant on a smart speaker.

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For the Madden project, StatMuse grabbed about two hours of audio content from the former coach in his studio and simultaneously captured facial motion data.

The company also captured high-resolution 3D scans of Madden’s bronze bust so that 3D character artists could create a digital virtual replica. And yes, you'll have to be in front of the actual bust, at least for now, to engage with Madden.

“It’s largely a storytelling experience,” says StatMuse chief technology officer and co-founder Adam Elmore, who says he would like to create similar digitized experiences with other members of the Hall. Some of Madden’s responses go on for three to five minutes.

“All these technologies are coming into existence at the same time and kind of hitting that right moment of inflection,” Elmore says. “So now you can do things like this, where you’ve got a fully digital persona that can take on and preserve the legacy of someone in a pretty cool way.” 

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow Ed Baig on Twitter: @edbaig