Talking Heads uses AI so civic educators can reach beyond engaged elite bubbles and have video conversations with the pubilc at scale.
Inspired by historical memory projects like the Histories of Belene, Talking Heads consists of AI assisted video conversations with civic educators and citizens on matters of public interest.
Our aim with Talking Heads is to use new technology to reach a wider audience beyond people who usually go to fact checking, public information or serious news websites, and give them content they can share.
First, we recorded the educators or other characters answering questions about an issue (in the first instance education policy in Bulgaria).
Then we use AI to process the footage and associate these answers with questions. This allows people to chat with the educators: the AI picks the reply so that people can have a natural conversation with the system.
Talking heads always responds with a video clip as well as a transcript: people can watch the clips and share it with their networks.
Talking Heads is supported by The Civics Innovation Fund which is itself supported by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and the King Baudouin Foundation.