Belgian creator uses AI to bring historical figures to life on Instagram

Melissa creates hyperrealistic AI videos to portray historical Belgian figures on her Instagram account, @belgianhistory8.

She produces content where figures such as James Ensor and Princess Astrid narrate their own life stories as if they were speaking directly to a modern audience. Melissa researches her subjects using Wikipedia, Google Books, and the Rijksarchief to ensure historical accuracy before using two AI tools.

She uses ChatGPT to generate a base image of the person based on historical photos and then uses Grok Imagine to animate the character and make them speak specific words. Her goal is to highlight forgotten people and anecdotes, including stories of female pioneers. Historian Brecht Deseure notes that while the project is not academic history, it succeeds in introducing people to new figures.

He observed that the format brought to light a revolutionary fighter named Marie Lombars, whom he had not encountered in his own research. Melissa maintains a personal rule to only create videos for individuals who have been deceased for at least 50 years to avoid upsetting living relatives.