Encountering Virtual Veterans: AI chatbots, martial ontologies, and memories of war

With new technologies presenting ever more ways to encounter war, this article asks about one in particular: representations of veterans powered by artificial intelligence. Specifically, I focus on the Virtual Veterans chatbot – named Charlie – produced by Anzac Square, the state war memorial of Queensland, Australia. Shared on the social media platform X, this feature has garnered significant public attention. I argue that AI representations of this nature delimit the boundaries of war by discussing certain topics and not others. They possess a martial ontology that locates certain subjects and issues outside of “war” and others within it. Further, they produce an epistemology of war that presents a state-sanctioned history as “first hand,” lending it significant authority and engendering vicarious militarism. In so doing, these chatbots reproduce existing ideas of nation, gender, racial identity and more.