A leading cultural institution partnered with Eternal Legacy AI and DeepRails to turn a bold idea called TimeFrame into a business win: bring Abraham Lincoln to life as a safe, historically accurate museum guide who could converse with visitors in real time.

‍

The challenge

Eternal Legacy AI set out to reinvent how people experience history — not by reading plaques, but by conversing with it. Their vision was TimeFrame: a 50-inch lifelike portrait of Abraham Lincoln capable of speaking, reasoning, and reacting to visitors in real time. The challenge was turning that vision into a museum-ready MVP that could demonstrate the future of interactive exhibits while maintaining absolute historical and factual integrity.

To attract partners like the Smithsonian and other major U.S. institutions, the team needed a system that could deliver an emotionally powerful, “living history” experience without risking factual drift or hallucinations. They turned to DeepRails to architect and build the entire MVP — from real-time speech and safety pipelines to the guardrail system ensuring every word Lincoln spoke reflected his authentic 1865 worldview.

• Responses had to be historically faithful to Lincoln’s voice, beliefs, and worldview.
  
• The installation needed to ensure safety and trust, avoiding hallucinations or inappropriate answers.
  
• Museum operators required observability—a clear window into every interaction to ensure quality control and compliance.

‍

The approach

The DeepRails team proposed embedding its Defend API as the real-time correction layer powering the experience. Every Lincoln response would be evaluated for correctness, completeness, adherence, and safety before ever reaching the visitor.

The solution also included DeepRails’ Hallucination Safe™ certification—a visible badge affixed to the display itself, providing visitors with scannable proof that the interaction was certified safe, accurate, and complete.

‍

How we built the interactive Lincoln engine

• Authentic persona: Lincoln’s voice, tone, and worldview were engineered to remain rooted in April 14, 1865, 7:00 p.m.—the last evening of his life.
  
• Production pipeline:
  
  • Visuals: A vertically mounted 50-inch screen projected a life-like Lincoln, animated through advanced avatar rendering.
    
  • Motion & presence detection: OpenCV + YOLO + MediaPipe pipelines tracked visitor movement and seamlessly transitioned Lincoln between listening, processing, and speaking modes.
    
  • Voice: A custom ElevenLabs voice model provided the cadence and warmth of Lincoln’s speech.
    
  • Real-time evaluation: Each generated response passed through the DeepRails Defend API for multi-guardrail scoring. Unsafe or incomplete answers were blocked, regenerated, and only then delivered to the display.
    
• Observability: DeepRails Monitor logged every interaction, providing curators with transparency and audit-ready data.

‍

The rollout

The system was deployed directly into a museum environment, with visitors able to walk up to the display, ask Lincoln a question, and hear him reply in his own period-accurate voice. Every screen carried a Hallucination Safe™ sticker, giving visitors a scannable way to verify the safety credentials of the installation.

‍

The results

• First-of-its-kind exhibit: A physical GenAI installation where visitors could have a direct, safe conversation with Abraham Lincoln.
  
• Certified safe interactions: 100% of outputs passed guardrails for accuracy, completeness, and safety.
  
• Visitor engagement: Long dwell times and repeat interactions demonstrated the exhibit’s magnetic appeal.
  
• Operational visibility: Museum staff had full observability, with logs and monitoring ensuring confidence at scale.

‍

Why it worked

• Physical implementation of GenAI: Moving beyond apps and websites, TimeFrame showed how generative AI could inhabit museum spaces.
  
• Built-in trust: The Hallucination Safe™ certification was more than branding—it visibly reassured visitors that every response was safe.
  
• Evaluation-first design: Guardrails weren’t an afterthought—they were the backbone, ensuring each Lincoln interaction was historically faithful and museum-grade.
  
  

Powered by DeepRails Defend, Hallucination Safe certification, and DeepRails Monitor, TimeFrame’s project transformed generative AI into a high‑impact, in‑gallery experience. The exhibit brought Lincoln’s wisdom to life while delivering measurable engagement, bulletproof safety, and operational control.

‍