Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of D-Day with the help of AI

Eighty years ago, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy. D-Day represented the largest amphibious invasion in history, and the stakes of its success couldn’t have been higher.  

Microsoft partnered with Iconem , a creative firm that specializes in the digitization of endangered cultural heritage sites, and the Taskforce of the 80th Anniversary of the Landings, Liberation of France, and Victory to commemorate the event that turned the tide of the Second World War.  

The Thread of Memory uses AI to bring the stories of the individuals at the heart of D-Day to life in an entirely new way. Consisting of both digital and in-person experiences in Normandy, Provence, and Paris, the Thread of Memory allows visitors unprecedented access to archival content provided by myriad organizations.     

Using AI to connect past and present 

Artificial intelligence technology has enormous potential to build a bridge between past and present, which is one of the primary goals of the Thread of Memory project. The Thread of Memory website superimposes historic images from the D-Day invasion on top of current-day French topography, highlighting the differences—and similarities—between the France of today and the France of 80 years ago. The team accomplished this by georeferencing historical aerial images using several geospatial and AI methodologies.   

Georeferencing a historical image start with identifying keypoints, or points of interest in a photo. Once keypoints in the historical image are matched to keypoints in modern imagery, the historical image is then warped so that pairs of matching keypoints are aligned. While developing the Thread of Memory website, the team discovered that georeferencing a single historical image then makes it possible to automatically find matches that overlap with that scene.  

Stories from the front—Jacqueline Moncorgé, Liaison officer in the Free French Forces Women's section of the Military, Administrative Liaison Mission: “It was a beach, covered in battle debris. And we had to get off the Liberty ship, but to get off the Liberty ship, you had to jump, with all your equipment, in a boat. We had a gas mask, camp bed, all that on our back. I wanted to take part. When a disaster like this happens in your country, you’re not just going to stand there with your arms crossed. The men teased us a bit, so we learned how to shoot a machine gun. Well, I was rubbish. And of course that made them laugh.” 

The Thread of Memory harnesses a number of other cutting-edge AI technologies, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Text-to-Speech (TTS), and Speech-to-Text models. LLMs with vision capabilities were indispensable for generating detailed descriptions of thousands of historical images. By incorporating both the image and its original caption into the model's prompt, we ensured the descriptions remained firmly grounded in historical context. LLMs also distilled these detailed descriptions into succinct titles and captions, enhancing user engagement and cross-cultural accessibility.  

TTS models transformed text into natural-sounding speech, adding an immersive auditory dimension to the historical narratives. Speech-to-Text models enabled the Thread of Memory team to unlock previously inaccessible narratives within historical video footage. These transcriptions, along with key frames extracted from the videos, were further analyzed by LLMs, significantly augmenting the scope of the Thread of Memory.  

Stories from the front—Tom Rice, Paratrooper in the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division: “As I jumped from the aircraft, my arm rubbed hard against the doorsill….The night was black all around me. I hit the ground hard and rolled to the side. With the daybreak, I discovered what Normandy looked like: a rich, very green and hilly farming region covered with impenetrable hedges. Heading blindly into the darkness, Tony, Frank, and I suddenly felt overcome with fear….We never knew at what point one of us might be injured or killed. In any case, there was nothing to say. Infantry soldiers can only swallow their hearts with their tears.”  

While the Thread of Memory experience is presented in French and English, generative AI gives people all over the world the ability to search the Thread of Memory’s interactive photo and video archives using their own natural language. Everyone who explores this exhibit can have a unique, personalized experience depending on their age, interests, language, and level of pre-existing knowledge about D-Day.   

Creating a better future can include strengthening our ties to the past—and AI is an important tool that can help us do that, making history more democratized and accessible for all. At Microsoft, we plan to continue to explore how AI can help bring more of these events and landmarks to the widest possible audience. In the meantime, we hope you’ll take the time to visit and explore the Thread of Memory.