AI Mushak – Ganesh Chaturthi Innovation

It all began with a simple thought.

As Ganesh Chaturthi was approaching, I asked myself:👉 “What if AI could respond like Lord Ganesha himself?”

So, I opened ChatGPT and gave it a prompt to act like Ganesha. To my surprise, the responses were wise, kind, and felt aligned with the qualities we associate with Him. That’s when the spark was born — what if we could build something where devotees could not just pray, but also ask questions and get answers from an AI personality inspired by Lord Ganesha?

But then reality hit us.If we created an AI-powered Ganesha idol, it might be misunderstood as disrespectful. As makers, we knew it was just AI — and AI can make mistakes — but for devotees, it could hurt sentiments.

That’s when a team member suggested a respectful pivot: instead of Lord Ganesha, why not bring His vehicle, Mushak (the rat), into the picture? Mushak is always seen close to Ganesha, and receiving answers from Him felt both logical and sensitive. We all agreed.

👉 And thus, the idea of AI Mushak was born.

From there, the journey unfolded step by step:

• Concept Design: We envisioned a 3D-printed Mushak with a mic in its ear to “listen” and a 3D-printed Shankh (conch) with a speaker to “whisper” the answers back privately to the devotee.

• Hardware Selection: Instead of bulky ESP32 boards, we chose the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32 — tiny yet powerful, with built-in mic options and WiFi. For Mushak, it handled speech input; for Shankh, it managed audio playback with an I²S amplifier and speaker.

• Wireless Communication: We picked ESP-NOW for low-latency data transfer between Mushak and Shankh.

• AI Stack:
• Speech to Text (STT): ElevenLabs (fast & accurate).
• LLM: OpenAI (with custom Ganesha-inspired prompts).
• Text to Speech (TTS): SpeechGen.io (natural-sounding Hindi voices).
• 3D Printing & Finishing: We designed and printed Mushak and Shankh, painted them beautifully, and left hollow cavities to hide circuits. Mushak even held a Modak with NeoPixel LEDs to indicate status.

• Extra UX Touches: A proximity sensor in Mushak’s ear (so recording starts only when you “cover the ear”), and LED cues for listening/processing/answering.

After days of coding, wiring, printing, and testing… the system came alive.

We placed Mushak near a Ganesh idol in a pandal. Devotees could whisper their question into Mushak’s ear, wait a few seconds, and then hold the Shankh to their ear to hear a thoughtful AI-powered answer — often ending with a short mantra.

✨ It felt magical. ✨

From idea to execution, AI Mushak was more than a project — it was proof that technology and tradition can beautifully coexist, if done with respect and creativity.

If you’d like to experience this project in action, we’ve documented the entire journey in a video — from the very first idea to the final installation in the pandal. Click the link below to watch, learn, and follow along step by step: