Valorem Reply, part of the Reply Group and focused on delivering innovative digital solutions with Microsoft technologies, partnered with Art Basel – a premier international art fair that hosts shows in Basel, Hong Kong, Miami Beach, Paris and Qatar – to enhance the visitor experience. In partnership with Microsoft, they developed Art Basel Lens, a feature within the Art Basel Companion app that uses image recognition to provide real-time information about artworks directly to visitors’ smartphones, making it easier to explore and engage with the art on display.

By scanning an artwork, visitors receive structured content about the piece, the artist, and the gallery. The feature supports a more autonomous and fluid exploration of the fair, helping users engage with the artworks that catch their attention and optionally share them on social media with automatic attribution.

Valorem Reply led the development of the AI image recognition pipeline, using Azure AI to train and host models for image embedding and cropping, with the contribution of another Reply company, Concept Reply. Azure AI Search powers the retrieval of visual matches through vector-based search. The backend infrastructure was built using Azure App Service and Azure Functions to manage image processing workflows, and Azure Blob Storage for secure and scalable asset handling.

After being piloted during the Miami Beach edition of the fair to evaluate its performance in a live environment, the feature was scaled for use at the events in Basel, Paris, Hong Kong, and Qatar, ensuring consistency across each location.

With Art Basel Lens, digital interaction becomes an unobtrusive layer that supports discovery and deepens engagement, without interfering with the physical experience of the fair.

Click here to discover more about the project.