--- title: "Schools Using AI Emulation of Anne Frank That Urges Kids Not to Blame Anyone for Holocaust" description: "A Utah-based startup has graced us with an AI-powered Anne Frank chatbot, and it's very eager to forgive and forget." date: "2025-01-18" modified: "2025-01-18" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-anne-frank-blame-holocaust" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai chatbot" - "anne frank" - "school" - "the digest" --- # Schools Using AI Emulation of Anne Frank That Urges Kids Not to Blame Anyone for Holocaust ![A Utah-based startup has graced us with an AI-powered Anne Frank chatbot, and it's very eager to forgive and forget.]() *LOHHEIDE, GERMANY - APRIL 26: Flowers and stones lay on and in front of the gravestone of Margot Frank and Anne Frank after a ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the former camp site on April 26, 2015 near Lohheide, Germany. An estimated 70,000 inmates died at the hands of the Nazis at Bergen-Belsen during World War II, including Jews and Soviet prisoners of war. Most famous among the victims is Anne Frank, who died at Bergen-Belsen of typhus shortly before the liberation by British troops in April, 1945. (Photo by Alexander Koerner/Getty Images) \Image: Alexander Koerner/Getty Images\* ## The Anne Frank Experience You're probably familiar with Anne Frank, a European Jewish girl whose posthumously-published diary documents her time hiding from Nazi persecution, before being apprehended and killed in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age 15. Unfortunately for humanity, a Utah-based tech startup called SchoolAI has summoned up an AI-generated version of Frank that feels like both an affront to her memory and a grim sign of things to come in the world of education. While there's a veneer of the historical character, it also shows all the flaws of OpenAI-style chatbots: overly courteous, unhelpfully vague, and so uplifting that it borders on wax museum-creepy. What's worse, as Berlin historian Henrik Schönemann [discovered while experimenting with the bot](), is that it seems trained to avoid pinning blame for Frank's death on the actual Nazis responsible for her death, instead redirecting the conversation in a positive light. "Instead of focusing on blame, let's remember the importance of learning from the past," the bot told Schönemann. "How do you think understanding history can help us build a more tolerant and peaceful world today?" ## Crash Course It's true that the real Frank expressed a certain commitment to forgiveness — "in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart," goes [one famous passage]() from her diary — it's puzzling to see such an iconic account of genocide twisted into such a balmy sentiment. "It's a kind of grave-robbing and incredibly disrespectful to the real Anne Frank and her family," Schönemann [wrote on Mastodon](). "She, her memory and the things she wrote get abused for our enjoyment, with no regard or care for the real person. How anyone thinks this is even remotely appropriate is beyond me." In addition, [he added](), the bot "violates every premise of Holocaust-education." As [Miles Klee wrote for ]()*[Rolling Stone]()* when similar bots started to hit the web in 2023, the ersatz historical figures are often wrong about basic biographical details, and show the same bowdlerized unwillingness to grapple with the type of incisive questions that real students might pose about difficult topics. Needless to say, school administrators who've [thrown caution to the wind]() to deploy this type of software are failing to ask important questions, from the practical to the philosophical: what does it *mean* to interact with a chatbot based on Anne Frank, how will it affect the education of actual kids, and what level of control do educators, administrators and state regulators have over the kind of content these things pump out? And above all, how did anyone think this was in good taste? **More on AI in classrooms:** [*University Enrolling AI-Powered "Students" Who Will Turn in Assignments, Participate in Class Discussions*]() ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()