Here is an excerpt from today’s New York Times article, How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 students Into the A.I. Future:

Her class at Southwest Miami Senior High School had already read about John F. Kennedy and discussed his campaign for “new frontier” economic and social policies. Now Ms. Lowd asked two dozen 11th graders to open their laptops and type a prompt into Google’s Gemini chatbot: “Act like President Kennedy. What was the new frontier?”

The chatbot quickly spat out paragraphs of Kennedyesque text, including phrases like “my fellow Americans.”

Then Ms. Lowd asked her students to analyze whether the chatbot simulations accurately reflected the Kennedy speeches they had studied. The teenagers’ verdict: The simulations were “awkward,” “weird” and yet still credible.

“It did a very good job of impersonating J.F.K.,” said Ashley Acedo, 17.

In some recent AI workshops for educators, I’ve been doing quick Great or Gimmick? scenarios. One of them happens to be about AI chatbots impersonating historical figures. Leaving aside teenage Ashley’s ability to discern whether or not AI did a good job of impersonating President Kennedy (are they a JFK scholar?), what do we think about these historical figure AI bots? I confess that I’m skeptical…

Great or gimmick?