About Epoch Voices
A place to talk with history’s figures face to face — and to be told plainly, every time, what you are actually looking at.
What it is
Epoch Voices is a gallery of historical figures — emperors and inventors, philosophers and generals, a few characters from fiction — each of whom you can speak with in a live video conversation. You type a question; the figure answers aloud, in a synthesised voice, with an animated portrait. The reply is grounded in that figure’s own words: their letters, books, speeches and journals, or for fictional characters, the work they appear in. Every figure’s card says exactly which.
How a conversation works
Pick a figure from the gallery and press Start. Your question is typed, never spoken — the site never captures your microphone. Behind the scenes, the most relevant passages from that figure’s source material are retrieved, a reply is generated from them, converted to speech, and rendered as a talking portrait, all in real time. What you type and what the figure says are relayed live to your browser and not stored anywhere by us — there is no transcript to keep.
Without an account you get one free conversation a day. A free account gives you a monthly allowance of conversations instead. Paid plans replace that count with a monthly budget of minutes, allow longer sessions, and — from Magellan up — add debates between two figures. See Membership and Pricing Information.
What you are watching
It is worth being blunt about this, because the technology makes it easy to forget. Every figure on this site is an AI-generated performance. The face is a generated portrait, animated by software. The voice is synthesised speech. Neither is a recording of the person — nothing here is footage or audio of anyone actually saying anything. No figure took part in it, and none of them, nor their estates, endorse, authorised or reviewed it. What a figure says is a machine-generated approximation grounded in historical material, with the degree of fictionalization inherent in any such portrayal. It is not a historical record, and it should not be relied on as one.
Where the words come from
Each figure’s material is drawn from that person’s own writing, in the public domain in the United States — sourced from Project Gutenberg, Wikisource and the Internet Archive, and in one case from scans transcribed for this project. We do not use biographies or third-party accounts of a figure: every answer is grounded in words the figure actually wrote. A small number of figures cannot meet that standard in full, and each says so on its own card — some speak from the work they appear in, including narration and other characters; some are grounded in scanned period material with the errors that implies.
Public-domain text does not by itself clear a trademark in a name or likeness. Every figure is reviewed for that before being added, and figures have been removed when that review found a live claim.
Who makes it
Epoch Voices is built and operated by Tresco Integrations LLC, in Illinois. What we keep about you, and which service providers handle a conversation along the way, is set out in the Privacy Policy. The rules for using the site are in the Terms of Service.
Common questions
Is this a real recording of the person?
No. Not the face, not the voice, not the words. See What you are watching above.
Do you keep what I say?
No. Conversation content is not written to our database. We keep a count of conversations started in the current period — a day without an account, a month with one — and, if you have an account, your favorite figures.
Is it free?
To start, yes. There is one free conversation a day for everyone, and a monthly allowance of conversations with a free account. Paid plans add more time and, on the higher tiers, debates — see Membership and Pricing Information.
Can my child use it?
Not on their own account: creating an account, or using the site without one, needs you to be 16 or over. A school with Institutional access can bring younger pupils in under the school’s own account — see Membership and Pricing Information.
Can I talk instead of type?
Not yet. Questions are typed; only the figure speaks. Your microphone is never used.
More, including plans, trials, cancellation and deleting your account, on the frequently asked questions page.