Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin smiled as she looked into Theodore Roosevelt’s bright blue eyes.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said.
“Go ahead; ask what’s on your mind?” responded the 26th president of the United States, standing in his office just a few feet behind a desk piled with books.
Wearing a black suit jacket with a matching tie and tan vest, Roosevelt proceeded to answer each query to the delight of everyone in the room.
“Wow, it’s amazing,” said Kearns Goodwin, who has written extensively about the president.
The brief conversation happened earlier this year. So, of course, it really wasn’t Roosevelt that Kearns Goodwin was speaking with, but an interactive AI-powered avatar of the man who served as U.S. president from 1901 to 1909.
The AI Roosevelt is one of the main and most popular features in the newly opened Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a 96,000-square-foot facility that opened July 4, 2026, in Medora, North Dakota. It is in the West to honor Roosevelt’s passion for nature conservation. He visited North Dakota often after the deaths of his wife and mother and said he would not have become president of the United States had it not been for his time there.
Before the library opened, curators worked tirelessly to ensure exhibits were historically accurate, including the AI Roosevelt. To do so, they called on a group of distinguished historians to meticulously examine various projects.
One of those was Radford University Professor of History Matt Oyos, a noted Roosevelt scholar who has studied the president since graduate school and, in 2018, published the book, “In Command: Theodore Roosevelt and the American Military.”
“The library staff recruited a group of subject matter experts to help make sure everything was historically accurate,” explained Oyos, whose work spanned from the summer of 2025 to the library’s opening. “I was brought in mostly as an expert on Roosevelt’s involvement in military affairs.”
Oyos’s expertise on Roosevelt’s role with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War was of particular interest to the library’s creators. When the group was examining the accuracy of the library’s visual representations, the professor’s knowledge became especially helpful.
One exhibit, for example, featured an American-style farmhouse atop San Juan Hill, where in July 1898, Roosevelt led the Rough Riders to a crucial victory in the war. Oyos, a military historian, informed the creators of the inaccuracy.
“It has to be hacienda style,” he explained in one of many meetings. Oyos also contributed to the accuracy of exhibits in portraying the clothing worn by the Spaniards and by Roosevelt and his troops, including details like the commander’s suspenders.
“They gave me a nod on helping with those,” Oyos modestly noted. “A lot of my work involved applying my research to help make sure everything in the library regarding his military activities was historically accurate.”
That included the AI version of Roosevelt.
And, like Kearns Goodwin, Oyos got an opportunity to ask questions of the president. Before the library opening, the Radford professor “put Roosevelt through the paces,” he said with a smile, “to see if I could trip it up.”
He asked AI Roosevelt several detailed questions, like how the name “Rough Riders” came about, his feelings about Woodrow Wilson as president and if his daughter, Alice, really did carry a green snake coiled in her purse. The professor asked more serious and challenging questions of Roosevelt, for example, his mishandling of the 1906 Brownsville Affair in Texas.
“I asked some pretty tough questions, and it handled it really well,” Oyos said. “There was still some tweaking to do before the library opened to the public, but in the moment, it did a pretty good job of answering my questions.
There was one hiccup, however, that Oyos recalled. He asked AI Roosevelt if the president had ever met Winston Churchill. His answer was no.
“But Roosevelt did, in fact, dine with a young Churchill around the turn of the century,” Oyos explained. “Roosevelt had only bad things to say about the future prime minister. He found Churchill to be ‘a rather cheap character.’ I have always thought it interesting about how two major figures of the 20th century didn't click.
“It was a great experience to be a part of it all,” the professor continued. “It was kind of like time travel.”
Unlike most U. S. presidents, Roosevelt’s library opening came after his death, 107 years to be exact. Oyos was honored to play a role in making it happen.
“Most presidents get a chance to put their stamp on their libraries,” he said. “Roosevelt didn’t. As a historian, I was happy I contributed to giving him his own library.”