Exclusive: Holocaust museum adding Rwandan genocide to AI interactives

Axios

14 hours ago

An Illinois Holocaust museum that uses AI technology to create "interactives" with Holocaust survivors is expanding its offering and including a project with a Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan genocide.
Why it matters: It's the first-ever non-Holocaust interactive interview for the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Ill., and signals that Holocaust museums are using the technology to bring attention to more recent genocides.
The big picture: The move comes amid rising concern that generative AI can fuel racism by amplifying bias from human-generated content on the internet.
Elon Musk's AI platform, Grok, for example, has repeatedly used antisemitic language on X.
Museums, however, are trying to use technology such as AI to create immersive displays aimed at fighting bigotry.
Zoom in: The new interactive interview at the Illinois museum will feature Kizito Kalima, a Tutsi survivor of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the museum will announce Tuesday.
Starting Aug. 26, visitors will be able to interact with Kalima's testimony and learn more about the 1994 genocide and his harrowing journey.
The project will be housed at a temporary satellite location in downtown Chicago's River North Neighborhood while the Skokie Museum undergoes major renovations.
How it works: Visitors can ask Kalima a question and a museum staffer will type the question into a chatbox while an image of him on a screen looks back.
"Then clips are made right based upon the algorithm, and it's keyword-based, similar to Siri," Kelley Szany, the museum's senior VP of education and exhibitions, told Axios.
Kalima will respond, and if he doesn't know the answer, he will say he wasn't asked the question.
Szany said Kalima was asked hundreds of questions in a recorded interview for the AI project, so he will likely have an answer to a question on the subject.
Zoom out: The museum also announced new interactive interviews featuring Holocaust survivors Rodi Glass and Marion Deichmann.
All interviews were developed in collaboration with USC Libraries, USC Digital Repository and the USC Shoah Foundation.
The interviews will eventually be housed at the renovated Skokie Museum and will be unveiled on a public website later.
Context: The Skokie Museum garnered national attention in 2017 after it unveiled 3-D holograms of actual Holocaust survivors and witnesses who could respond to questions from visitors.
A museum employee feeds the questions into a computer, which then uses a tailored AI system that develops an answer, generates audio sounding like the survivor's voice, and creates a video of them image "speaking."
The holograms can answer questions ranging from whether they believe in God to what they think about genocide, Szany said.
Holocaust educators say the interactive technology is essential as the last generation of Holocaust survivors age, and scholars race to record their stories.
Between the lines: While educators work to save testimony for Holocaust survivors, they are also including more exhibits on more recent genocides and trying to bring attention to ongoing ones.