The White House and PragerU's new history exhibit features AI founding fathers
A history exhibit commissioned by President Donald Trump's White House relies on AI-generated videos of the founding fathers and other historical figures from revolutionary times. The "Road to Liberty" exhibit at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. features dozens of AI videos that bring "America’s founding to life through cinematic storytelling." It's a bit weird and, at times, inaccurate.
Gizmodo covered the exhibit in detail, noting that the PragerU-created "Founders Museum" shows a "rather distorted view of America’s founding." (PragerU is a conservative nonprofit that makes educational content, though it has come under fire from liberals for presenting rightwing content as purely educational.) An uncanny valley, AI-generated John Adams, for instance, says "facts do not care about our feelings," which is the infamous tagline of rightwing figure Ben Shapiro. Obviously, John Adams did not actually coin that phrase, and it seems to be a deliberate troll on the part of PragerU.
At the Road to Liberty website, visitors can see 62 AI-generated videos featuring historical figures.
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The White House told NPR that the goal was to use AI so that "these people, places and events come to life, making history engaging to Americans across the country." However, experts who spoke to NPR said they were worried about the portrayal of the founding fathers
"While the project to bring the founders and the signers of the Declaration of Independence into focus is one that many historians admire and would support," William G. Thomas, vice president of the research division at the American Historical Association, told NPR, "I think there's some concerns about how that's done in this case."
If nothing else, the AI founding fathers appear a bit strange — at least to this reporter. And, as Gizmodo pointed out, the John Adams video features the odd AI habit of creating people with extra or missing fingers. That's something you'd expect from AI slop posted online, but perhaps not a White House-sponsored exhibit on the nation's history.
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
