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The AI for History

Interview 100,000+ historical figures, from Cleopatra to Churchill, who answer from real primary sources.

Speaks 50+ languages
Teachers using HumyUsed by 98 schools and universities, with customers in 42 countries
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Chambersburg Area School District logo
Broward County Public Schools logo
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National Louis University logo
South Florida PBS logo
Punahou School logo
University of Wisconsin–River Falls logo
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Archbishop Mitty High School logo
Kingsburg High School logo
Norwalk Public Schools logo
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Moore Public Schools logo
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Robbinsville Public Schools logo
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Tecnológico de Monterrey logo
Hyper Island logo
Partner school logo
Chambersburg Area School District logo
Broward County Public Schools logo
Nebo School District logo
National Louis University logo
South Florida PBS logo
Punahou School logo
University of Wisconsin–River Falls logo
Partner school logo
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Archbishop Mitty High School logo
Kingsburg High School logo
Norwalk Public Schools logo
Partner school logo
Connections logo
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Moore Public Schools logo
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Robbinsville Public Schools logo
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Public domain, on the record

Grounded in real historical sourcesfrom the world’s public archives

The library in numbers

100,000+ historical figuresfrom the ancient world to today

Figures from 223 countries and territories: world, national and regional history in one library for schools, universities and museums, with every figure answering from real primary sources.

historical figures
100,000+
countries and territories
223
world regions on six continents
12
fields, from science to sport
20

By era

  • Ancient world
    before 500 AD
    1,7212%
  • Middle Ages
    500–1500
    6,1426%
  • Early modern
    1500–1800
    11,77012%
  • Long 19th century
    1800–1914
    35,26935%
  • 1914 to today
    58,28058%

By world region

  • Western Europe
    UK, France, Germany
    31,26931%
  • Central and Eastern Europe
    Russia, Poland, Czechia
    18,39818%
  • North America
    US, Canada, Greenland
    13,67514%
  • Latin America and the Caribbean
    Argentina, Mexico, Brazil
    10,28610%
  • Middle East and North Africa
    Türkiye, Israel, Iran
    8,0438%
  • East Asia
    Japan, China, South Korea
    6,3806%

Also the Nordic countries, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Oceania, South Asia and the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Counted 4 November 2026. A figure can count in more than one row, and some are undated (myth and legend), so the rows do not add up to the total. Countries follow today’s borders.

Browse the library

Wherever you teach

Your exams, and your country’s history

Essays, source analyses and short answers are graded against the rubric you write, so they can follow the mark scheme of the exam your students sit, in the language your class works in.

  • GCSE and A-Level · UK
  • HSC · Australia
  • Gy11 · Sweden
  • Abitur · Germany
  • IB · International
  • O-Level · Singapore
  • Québec’s history programme · Québec
  • AP · US

New · Panels

History is an argument.Now students moderate it.

Up to 20 AI historical figures in one group chat. Students argue with the panel or moderate it, and every student gets a debate of their own.

Try a panel free

On every plan. Each figure that answers uses one message from your pool.

Panel · 5 figures

Moderator · Motion

The colonies should declare independence.

Thomas Paine

Reconciliation is a dream this continent has woken from. Look at a map:

“…there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”

Common Sense, 1776

Edmund Burke

Mr. Paine mistakes a quarrel with the King’s ministers for a quarrel with England. I put the remedy to the Commons in four words:

“The proposition is peace.”

Speech on Conciliation with America, 22 March 1775

Your Majesty, why did the colonists’ last petition go unanswered?

King George III

Because a petition does not excuse an army in the field. I told Parliament what this war is for:

“…manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire.”

Speech to Parliament, 26 October 1775

Moderator

Mr. Paine, the King says this is about empire, not liberty. Is he wrong?

A staged exchange · the quotations are real
  1. 01

    You seat the panel

    Pick two to twenty figures for an interview, debate or simulation, or let the AI choose them for your topic. Figures you built, or ones other teachers shared, can sit on it too.

  2. 02

    The student picks who speaks

    They put a question to the whole panel or to one figure by name, and choose who answers next. When a claim needs testing, they step in as moderator.

  3. 03

    The figures argue with each other

    Switch to Discuss and the figures argue the point among themselves for as many lines as you allow, up to 20. The student can stop them or cut in at any point.

  4. 04

    Graded on what the student wrote

    The rubric scores only the student’s lines: in a panel debate, the motion they set and how well each interjection steers the panel. Burke can argue beautifully. It earns the student nothing.

The difference

Humy vs ChatGPTthe same models, answering from sources

Humy runs on the same models as ChatGPT. The difference is that each figure answers from its own sources, inside a class you run.

How Humy compares with ChatGPT for teaching
Student safety
Humy: Topics and safeguards set in every figure’s system prompt.
ChatGPT: Consumer teen safeguards, but no validated persona prompt, so figures can drift out of character.
Sources and personality
Humy: Up to 100 curated sources per figure, so it knows the facts and writes in the figure’s own style.
ChatGPT: Improvises a persona from training data or the web.
Quotes
Humy: Copied word for word from the source and open the page. 97% higher historical-reasoning score than the same model without sources.
ChatGPT: Quotes are generated, so every reference needs checking.
Teacher view
Humy: See every student’s chats and submissions, with AI grading.
ChatGPT: No student accounts in ChatGPT for Teachers, so no view of student chats.
AI models
Humy: Choose OpenAI, Claude or Gemini.
ChatGPT: OpenAI models only.
Access
Humy: Students join by link or QR code, no account. Embeds, API and SDK.
ChatGPT: Every student needs their own ChatGPT account.

Assignment builder

Assignments the AI writes and grades for you

  • Interviews, debates, simulations, open questions and DBQ, LEQ and FRQ essays in under 30 seconds
  • AI scores each submission against your rubric and writes the feedback, saving hours a week
  • Set the reading level per class, from primary school to university
  • Upload your own sources, or have our team find them for your course
Humy assignment builder interface showing AI-generated assignments

New · Founder simulations

Build an AI version of your founder from your own archive

  • Upload the founder’s letters, speeches, diaries and minutes; every quote is copied from them and opens the page
  • Give staff, students, alumni and visitors a founder they can question
  • Share it by link, QR code, or embedded on your website or intranet
  • Built with our team from your archive, as we did for National Louis University’s founder

Reviews

Reviews from educatorsin their own words

“We enjoyed the program last year and used it frequently.”
“My students say it’s a welcome change of pace. I’m not a fan of the “sage on the stage” model, so I try to incorporate research-oriented and self-paced activities. With Humy, students have to take charge of their learning. They’ve become more adept at critical thinking, forming better questions, and improving their reading comprehension. The interview feature has been my go-to tool. I create assignments where students must ask historical figures a set number of questions, then summarize the responses to ensure they’re truly absorbing the material. This approach lets them actively explore the past rather than passively consuming information.”
“Humy has helped me bring historical figures, sometimes long past, to life. When my students interact with these figures in real-time, it eliminates some of the perceived “ancient” characteristics of my curriculum. This has shifted my students’ thinking away from viewing history as abstract or irrelevant. Real-time interactions make historical figures relatable, even allowing students to ask off-topic questions that help put historical lives in a more relevant context for 13-year-olds. The feature I use the most is the interview feature. After teaching a topic, most recently Gandhi and Joan of Arc, I have the students ask pointed, focused questions. We practice good conversation techniques beforehand, teaching them to listen (or read) carefully and formulate thoughtful follow-up questions rather than just interrogating. It helps students practice effective conversation skills.”
“Through Humy’s dynamic platform, students engage in inquiry-driven explorations, where they not only interact with historical personas but also unearth leads to primary and secondary documents.”
“I introduced Humy as part of my student project and was surprised by the high level of engagement from my students. It added completely new dimensions to the project.”
“Humy saves me 4 hours per week on grading, and the feedback students receive is awesome. I really like it. I showed it to my principal, and he was blown away by it. The feedback part is really awesome.”

Try Humy in your next lesson, seminar or chapter

Free plan, 20 messages a month, no credit card · students join with a link, no accounts to set up

Privacy and approval

Ready for your school or district’s approval processwith the paperwork prepared

FERPA and GDPR aligned, with student data stored on Microsoft Azure in the United States or Sweden.

  • Signed in 16 US states

    Student data privacy agreement

    Covers how student data is handled.

  • For your IT team

    Network settings

    What your school or district needs in order to allow Humy on its network.

  • For procurement

    Source provider letter

    For vendor and procurement approval.

FAQ

Frequently asked questionsanswered plainly

Updated in 2026. Have more questions? Contact us.

Humy is a website where you hold in-depth conversations with AI recreations of more than 100,000 historical figures from 223 countries and territories: ask Hammurabi or Marie Curie a question and get an answer back, in writing or out loud, in 50+ languages. A figure can be given an archive of primary sources (letters, speeches, scanned books, photographs), which it searches while answering. Every quote it shows is copied character for character from the document and opens the page, so you can read the passage in context; the AI never writes a quote. Schools and universities use Humy for assignments graded to a rubric, museums put figures in their exhibits, and private readers use it on their own. Nothing to install. Humy comes from the team behind the Hello History app (2022); Hello History for schools became Humy in 2023 (humy.ai/hello-history-for-schools).

It works well beyond K-12. Reading level is set per figure version from primary school through university and adult learners, and the five assignment formats run unchanged in a seminar. Of our 648 paying customers, 92 are schools, 6 are universities, 375 are individual teachers, 19 are individual professors, 143 are private individuals and 13 are businesses. Museums and cultural institutions embed figures in their exhibits. Wherever people learn from sources, the platform fits.

Yes, and 143 people pay to do exactly that. Humy began in 2022 as the Hello History app, and private readers are still part of it, with paying individuals in 31 countries. The free plan gives you 20 messages a month with no credit card; the personal plan is US$129 a year. Question any of the 100,000+ figures by text or live voice, or upload a public-domain memoir and interrogate its author. If you prefer a phone app, Hello History (hellohistory.ai) is our consumer app for chatting with historical figures on the go. Classes, assignments and school privacy agreements stay on Humy.

The free plan is 20 messages a month, no credit card. Individuals pay US$129 a year. School plans start at US$600 per school per year; universities get a quote at humy.ai/request-a-quote. Museums start with a 30-minute demo, booked from humy.ai/for-museums. Libraries, archives and publishers book a call from their own pages. Prices are in US dollars.

ChatGPT improvises a persona from its training data and generates its quotes. A Humy figure answers from up to 100 curated sources, copies every quote word for word from them and opens the page, and runs inside your class. You set the assignment, the rubric and the reading level, you can read every student's chat, and students join by link or QR code with no account. You can also choose OpenAI, Claude or Gemini models. The full comparison is in the Humy vs ChatGPT table above.

Two different things, so two answers. A quote is never written by the AI: when a figure quotes, Humy's backend copies the passage character for character from the source document, and you can open the page it came from. In our published benchmark (a Napoleon figure, August 2026) that held for all 1,323 quotes; none was fabricated. The prose around the quotes is still the AI's. Loading the documents cut outright invention there from 22.6% of answers to 12.2%, which means about one answer in eight still carries a wrong date or detail. We publish those numbers at humy.ai/blog/humy-2-6-97-percent-increase-in-historical-reasoning. That is why every quote opens its page: so you can check, and so students learn to. The more documents a custom figure has, the better its prose gets, and you can give feedback to refine it.

Five formats: interview, debate, historical simulation, open questions (open-ended or short-answer), and essay: source-based essays, long essays, free-response questions (the US AP exam's DBQ, LEQ and FRQ) and concept-application prompts. You set the level from primary school through university and lifelong learners, the language, and the standards, whether US federal and state, or international, and you write the grading rubric, so it can follow the mark scheme of the exam your students sit: GCSE and A-Level, the HSC, Gy11, the Abitur, the IB, O-Levels, Québec's history programme or AP. The formats are subject-agnostic, so you can debate an ethical question in philosophy, interview a scientist for a lab unit, or assign a free-response essay in any course, not only history. Interviews, debates and simulations can run with one figure or with a panel of up to 20.

More than 50, in text and in live voice. The app ships 42 base languages, including Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese, and a figure can hold the whole conversation in any of the 50+. A quote is copied from its document character for character, so it stays in the language it was written in. Voice calls are capped at ten minutes each; images and tables appear in text mode only.

Yes. Upload the founder's letters, speeches, diaries and papers, in text, image or video, and Humy builds a figure that quotes them, each quote opening the page it came from. Archive builds are made with our team: at National Louis University in Chicago we built the university's founder, Elizabeth Harrison, from 25 of her writings, photographs and documents.

No. You share a chat as a web link or QR code, and students open it and start talking — no sign-up and no password. You choose whether they join anonymously or enter their name.