New Facebook bot for visitors to Anne Frank museum

Seven decades ago, the young Jewish diarist Anne Frank is unlikely to have imagined that her story would be kept alive for new generations via a computer-generated bot.      

But now visitors to the Amsterdam museum, lodged in the house where the teenager wrote her famous diary as she hid from Nazi occupiers, can learn about her history thanks to a unique collaboration with Facebook.      

"In these troubling times we live in, the story of Anne Frank is more relevant than ever," said museum director Ronald Leopold, unveiling the initiative.      

"We are concerned about the fact that more the 70 years after the war, half of the visitors are under 30 and they know less than my generation. So it's important to give more historical context and more historical information to connect with that history," he added.      

The chat-bot programme is an information technology software that allows users to talk directly with the museum via Facebook messenger. Based on artificial intelligence, the programme is designed to improve over time as it learns from the questions users pose. So far it is limited, and only offers a few options.