ANZAC Day, essentially the Australian and Kiwi equivalent of Veterans’ Day in the U.S., recently took place, and one state government thought it would be educational to train an A.I. model to imitate one of the first ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), who fought in World War I. Naturally, being the internet, this didn’t go entirely to plan: People immediately began trying to break the A.I.’s spirit and/or coding.




Since the A.I. isn’t solely trained on the State Library of Queensland’s World War I archives and, like any A.I. chatbot, is trained on large swathes of the internet, people quickly worked to make “Charlie” break character in a variety of ways, including asking it about an accused Australian war criminal, asking it for help with Python and asking it to pretend it were acting in a play as a Jamaican chef.




Perhaps one of the best examples is the person who got the bot to talk as if it were Jar Jar Binks, someone the soldier would have undoubtedly loved had he lived a century later. Staying in the Star Wars universe, someone else got the A.I. to take on the role of Kylo Ren, although the illusion was quickly shattered when he asked him about his relationship with Rey — telling.




If people’s requests got too graphic or NSFW, the bot would end the conversation, which is cowardice neither characteristic nor befitting of an ANZAC. Someone asked the bot what its parameters were, and they explained its nonconfrontational approach: it’s trained to remain calm and try to direct the conversation back to a more appropriate topic, or, failing that, disengage.


It was also taught to specifically answer questions about “LGBTQ+ matters” in a “nuanced way that acknowledges both the historical context and a modern understanding of such issues,” which doesn’t sound remotely period accurate for a 19-year-old from Queensland living in the 1910s, but sure.


The bot is still online even though ANZAC Day has passed, but like most chatbots based on historical people, there’s not much educational value in engaging with it. You’re simply always going to be better off reading the diaries, letters and testimonies of actual people who lived through historical events than talking to a SFW chatbot trained on other people’s memories.