Ai-aided virtual conversations with WWII vets are latest feature at New Orleans museum
NEW ORLEANS — Olin Pickens sat in his wheelchair facing a life-sized image of himself on a screen, asking it questions about being taken prisoner by German soldiers during World War II. After a pause, his video-recorded twin recalled being given “sauerkraut soup” by his captors before a grueling march.
“That was a Tuesday morning, February the 16th,”
Pickens’ onscreen likeness answered. “And so we started marching. We’d walk four hours, then we’d rest 10 minutes.”
Pickens is among 18 veterans of the war and its support effort featured in an interactive exhibit that opened Wednesday at the National WWII Museum. The exhibit uses artificial intelligence to let visitors hold virtual conversations with images of veterans.
Pickens, of Nesbit, Mississippi, was captured in Tunisia in 1943 as U.S. soldiers from the 805th Tank Destroyer Battalion were overrun by German forces. He returned home alive after spending the rest of the war in a prison camp.
“I’m making history, to see myself telling the story of what happened to me over there,” said Pickens, who celebrated his 102nd birthday in
December. “I’m so proud that I’m here, that people can see me.”
The Voices From the Front exhibit also enables visitors to the New Orleans museum to ask questions of war-era home front heroes and supporters of the U.S. war effort — including a military nurse who served in the Philippines, an aircraft factory worker, and Margaret Kerry, a dancer who performed at USO shows and, after the war, was a model for the Tinker Bell character in Disney
productions.
Four years in the making, the project incorporates video-recorded interviews with 18 veterans of the war or the support effort — each of them having sat for as many as a thousand questions about the war and their personal lives. Among the participants was Marine Corps veteran Hershel Woodrow “Woody” Wilson, a Medal of Honor winner who fought at Iwo Jima, Japan. He died in June 2022 after recording his responses.