The National Archives has opened a new permanent exhibit that uses machine learning to help visitors navigate billions of pages of U.S. historical records, marking the first time a museum on the National Mall has powered an exhibit with artificial intelligence.
The exhibit, called "The American Story," debuted in November as the nation heads toward its semiquincentennial in 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Archivists and exhibit designers say the technology is intended to make the federal record easier to explore while maintaining historical integrity by pointing visitors to real documents rather than generating new material.
The National Archives, the custodian of cornerstone documents including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, holds vast collections that can be daunting for casual visitors.
The new exhibit aims to shrink that distance by letting visitors start with their own interests before utilizing automated tools to surface related records across centuries of American life.
Visitors begin by selecting topics and preferred types of materials, such as documents, maps, or photographs. An AI-driven system then links those choices to relevant archival records and prompts additional connections as people move through the galleries.
Visitors can later revisit their selections online through a QR code, allowing them to pick up the thread at home, in classrooms, or in future research.
The system functions like a recommendation engine, using natural language processing to enable chatbot-style interactions and guide visitors toward material they might not have known existed.
Organizers describe it as a way to encourage discovery inside an institution whose holdings are so large that many of its most compelling records can remain hidden in plain sight.
"Part of the magic of this system is that it's nudging visitors into new territory and new areas of content that they didn't think about exploring," said John McCarthy, principal of interactive design at Cortina, the Archives' technology partner.
The $40 million project includes more than 2 million records curated by archivists and cataloged with the help of AI, according to the Archives and its partners.
The Archives keeps only 2% to 5% of federal records generated each year, but that still amounts to about 13.5 billion pages of text, along with photographs, maps, films, videos, and audio recordings.
Franck Cordes, the National Archives capital campaign director, said personalization helps visitors uncover meaningful material while preserving historical context. He said curators also faced challenges presenting difficult content to a wide audience.
"We have some very graphic, painful imagery," Cordes said, citing Nazi concentration camps as an example.
"We were very careful to be able to create a system that doesn't shy away from any of the stories of World War II," he continued, "but does it in such a way … that's not going to present material that a parent might be upset that their kids were seeing for the first time."
The exhibit's debut comes as museums, libraries, and schools grapple with the spread of AI tools that can produce convincing fakes and inaccuracies, raising fears about distorted historical narratives.
Museum officials emphasized that the Archives' system is designed to retrieve and organize existing records rather than fabricate them.
"We're not doing anything generative," McCarthy said. "We're not reinventing history or anything like that."
Instead, the Archives is betting that AI can help connect Americans to their history by making primary sources easier to find, explore, and understand without rewriting the stories those sources tell.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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