What happens to our memory of May 4, 1970 when generative AI starts filling in the archive?

This experimental video essay explores that question by combining original Kent State footage with AI-generated protest imagery and Black Power visual motifs, layered against Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Four Dead in Ohio” and fragments of late 1960s counterculture sound. Some of this footage is real. Some of it never happened.

This is a hybrid archive. In many ways, it isn’t new. Storytelling has always blurred the line between fact and interpretation. What is new is the speed and realism with which generative tools turn imagination into something that looks like record. The difference now is not that we mix fiction and nonfiction, but that it is becoming harder to tell them apart. Which is why, more than ever, AI literacy matters. Not just technically, but through storytelling. We learn this by doing, by making, by creating and studying the work itself. And we do it transparently, with careful attention to attribution and source. Not by banishing these tools, but by understanding them.

This is not an attempt to fabricate “lost footage.” It is an exploration of how generative tools can reshape our relationship to the visual record, especially around moments of state violence, protest, and youth culture in the USA.

As AI begins to extend and reinterpret historical imagery, the boundary between documentation and imagination becomes less stable. What we see may feel authentic, even when it never existed. Over time, that raises a harder question. How will future viewers distinguish between what was recorded and what was generated?

This piece sits at the intersection of experimental documentary, video essay, and media theory. It is an attempt to probe how memory, technology, and history are starting to blur.

Within the first 12 hours of release, the video reached 900 views, 12 likes, and 3 comments. One comment was removed. Early signals like this are small, but they hint at how viewers are engaging with the format and the questions it raises.

As you watch, consider:

• What feels real, and why?
• Where do you draw the line between documentation and speculation?
• How might synthetic images reshape collective memory over time?

And maybe the most important question:

If it looks real and feels real, does it become real in memory?

Let me know what you think. Does this kind of synthetic archive deepen your understanding of history, or make it harder to trust what you see?

Production Notes
Format: Vertical video (designed for YouTube Shorts and social media viewing)
First release in the Hybrid Archive series
Archival footage sourced via YouTube (ClipGrab)
Archival footage + AI video: Runway: Seedance 2.0, Kling 3.0, Nano Banana 2
Edit: Canva
First release in the Hybrid Archive series

A final note. A friend of mine and former colleague was a freshman at Kent State when this happened. He had been instructed to stay in his dorm room, which he did. He did not see the events unfold, but he heard the gunshots.