Ssemakula explained that the innovation was driven by gaps in tourism, including limited access to trained guides and language barriers that often prevent visitors from fully understanding cultural sites. He notes that the system, embodied in Okello, is designed to complement human guides by delivering consistent, multilingual information, while relying on narratives sourced from local historians, elders, and cultural experts to ensure authenticity and accuracy.
"We are not looking at replicating human storytelling, but we are looking at creating a complementary experience that preserves and amplifies the human narratives. So, our key approach is, first of all AI cannot generate authentic cultural stories, that would be fabrication. However, we're using pearl-guide as a vessel for human stories. So, from our cultural artefacts, in this case, you have Miss Tourism, we have the elders, we have the historians, so they contribute to the narratives, and we just will just be using pearl-guide to deliver them consistently, because we know that you as humans, we can't provide 24/7 consistent information. So, in these cases […] We are building emotional mapping into our system, whereby our robot will be able to recognize emotions, it will know when to pause, it will how to modulate the voice tone for different contexts,” Ssemakula explained.