AI revives Anne Frank: Bringing her story to new generations

‘We tried to reach the stories that most people might not know,’ the CEO of CityFans told French news agency AFP about the new immersive experience in the footsteps of Anne Frank that can be done with a smartphone in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is now offering an immersive smartphone experience where you follow in Anne Frank's footsteps to experience her story. All thanks to the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The project offers an interactive reconstruction of the experience of Dutch Jews under the Nazi occupation, according to French news agency AFP and communications in the Dutch press.

Spoken text and realistic animations

According to Moti Erdeapel, CEO of CityFans, the company behind the project, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam is very small and therefore has limited capacity. He points out that many people who come are disappointed because they cannot visit the museum as a result. The house where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis is visited by more than a million tourists every year. Tickets for the museum have to be bought six weeks in advance because they sell out so long in advance. But now, with the help of a code - and of course a smartphone and a headset - those interested can embark on a seven-kilometre tour with 12 stops. Along the way, the route is accompanied by audio narration and realistic animations created with AI and based on data from the Anne Frank Stichting, the Amsterdam municipality and the Holocaust Museum.

‘We tried to reach the stories that most people might not know, but which are incredible, of people who really risked their lives to save children and smuggle them out of the hands of the Nazis and into hiding addresses,’ Erdeapel said. One of the outposts, for example, is the former home of Miep Gies (1910-2010), a Dutch Catholic who helped hide the Frank family. Her face has been brought to life through archive photos and digital animation.

Tech-savvy new generations

While emphasising the role and importance of the Anne Frank Museum and the Anne Frank Diaries, the CEO of CityFans also sees the immersion as a way to introduce the story of Anne Frank to new, tech-savvy generations. She adds that it is important for visitors to explore and engage with the stories and that there is a human aspect to it.

The Anne Frank House Museum is housed in the building where a Jewish girl hid from the Nazis with her family and four other Jews during World War II. The family was discovered by the Gestapo after two years in hiding and initially taken to Auschwitz concentration camp. Later, Anne and her older sister Margot were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhoid fever in February 1945 at the age of 15. Only Anne's father Otto, who was also responsible for publishing her diary, saw the end of the war and her release from the camp.

(SR - Bron: AFP - Cityfans - Illustratie: ©picture alliance / Soeren Stache/dpa | Soeren Stache)