Wednesday 6 August 2025, 12:10pm to 1pm
Taiwhanga Kauhau — Auditorium, (lower ground) National Library Wellington. Entrance on Aitken Street.
In this presentation, Gareth Watkins and Roger Smith from PrideNZ will step through ‘A Rather Queer Cuba Street’ — a heritage audio-visual presentation created using a range of off-the-shelf AI technologies.
Heritage storytelling with AI
Drawing on the PrideNZ archival audio collection, A Rather Queer Cuba Street was a site-based event that combined eye-witness audio clips, AI-generated human avatars, and live presentation to create an engaging, feature-rich historical experience.
In this month’s Public History Talk, Gareth Watkins and Roger Smith from PrideNZ will talk about the range of off-the-shelf artificial intelligence technologies used in the project — from AI transcriptions of oral histories to AI-assisted identification of engaging quotations from long-form interviews, and the creation of video elements featuring AI human avatars.
Discover how some popular AI tools can help surface historic content and elevate storytelling.
About the speakers
Gareth Watkins is the founder and editor of PrideNZ. He, along with Roger Smith, co-founded Walk Tours NZ in 2017 – offering free community LGBTIQ+ walk tours around Wellington.
Dr Roger Smith is also a contributor to PrideNZ and a past Trustee of the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand (now Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa).
More information can be found here.