National WWII Museum's new exhibit uses AI to let visitors have virtual conversations with veterans

An interactive exhibit opening Wednesday at the National WWII Museum will use artificial intelligence to let visitors hold virtual conversations with images of veterans, including a Medal of Honor winner who died in 2022. Voices From the Front will also enable 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.