I have spoken many times about how great Google Gemini is. Here, I talk about how it can be used in historical education because of its high realism. These are not the stylized images of Dalle-3 but something that has weight in the depiction of reality. This ability to recreate reality is very important in education as ChatGPT and Google Gemini already have research tabs to allow for students to improve their understanding of the past.
The image above comes from the prompt: Create photorealistic image of a young Middle Class woman in Martinsburg, Virginia in her room in 1840 era.
Such AI generations are more accurate than previously and you can ask Gemini to elaborate on these images, especially if you see something incorrect in the image.
One such elaboration beyond correcting anachronisms is the ability to label everything in that image. Here is an example.
The image above comes from the prompt: Create photorealistic image of a young Middle Class woman in Martinsburg, Virginia in her room in 1870 era.
Next I use the prompt for the chatbot to label the photo: Take this image and label everything that is historically relevant for teaching about this age in interior design and style.
You would have had to research specific sections separately just to be able to know what each of these elements meant in context. Such a tool as Gemini proves that AI is not just about “taking” people’s jobs or hobbies but enhancing them and making look at our surroundings more closely.
The implications for education can revitalize a rather stagnant profession. This can be way of putting in Socratic thinking into schools, connecting ideas in concentric relationships instead of the linear ideas I was exposed to when I was in my schooling age. There will be people who criticize these tools for stealing people’s art or photographs. My response is that we should be heterodox on this issue.
Chatbots such as ChatGPT are only getting more sophisticated at creating historical images. Teachers should be attempting to use these tools and encourage their students to learn how to use them.
There were many early stories about students using ChatGPT in order to cheat. Now is the time to be able to help students use these tools to understand the nature of their history and societies.
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