Example
The Evolution of AI, Told by Claude ⏰ (yes, I let Claude narrate its own family history)
This week's challenge was an interactive timeline, and I could not resist. What if Claude told the story of AI, from Turing's big question in 1950 to Claude itself, and poked fun at its own ancestors along the way? 🤖
I built it as a Rise 360 Microlearning using a Code Block. The video was created using Articulate's AI Avatar tool with Claude as my co creator.
Learners meet Claude in a short intro video, then click through 8 eras in any order.
Each one opens with Claude's narration, plus two things they can choose to dig into: "Show the receipts" for the facts and "Claude's hot take" for the commentary.
Explore all 8 and Claude unlocks a closing thought. There's also a Surprise me button for the indecisive. 🎲
Why I built it this way: A timeline shouldn't feel like a row of dates. The learner decides what to open, what to skip, and when to laugh.
The humor is doing real work too. If someone remembers that ELIZA only asked questions and Deep Blue couldn't write an email, the history stuck.
Some fun facts:
- Clocks drift down the background, using a clock image I supplied, because it's a timeline and I committed to the bit ⏰
- I created the Claude character using Articulate's AI Avatar which started as a prompt, then I brought it to life as an image and a video
- The video wrapper has custom controls, speed options, and a transcript
Claude wrote a lot of the code and I steered the design, which is honestly how most of my projects go now.
Have a look and tell me which era surprised you most! 👇
The Evolution of AI, Told by Claude
4 Replies
I love those video wrappers. Are those created with vibe codes?
Thanks to you SMcNicol , I realized that you can create an avatar from a simple prompt. I had missed the “Create” button. (That's why this forum and these demos are so helpful.) Yours turned out really well in this case. You also use it as an image (in very small inserts only) because, if I’m not mistaken, you can’t extract the character you created to use it as a buddy throughout the module. That’s an annoying limitation of using an avatar created this way: it can only appear in the video. In my opinion. However, great work on both demos.
Thank you, that means a lot! One thing to flag though: you're not stuck with the avatar only living in the video.
You can actually download the image straight from the AI Avatar generator, so the character comes out as a still image you can reuse anywhere in the module.
I usually generate a few versions of the same character with different expressions and download each one, then drop them in as a buddy character throughout, not just in the video block. So the limitation is more about knowing that download option exists than about the tool itself.
That's very interesting, thank you SMcNicol . I had noticed the “Download Character” button. If I understand correctly your process, once you've created an avatar you like, you use the prompt to generate an identical version of that avatar with a different expression or pose, and then download it. Then you do another iteration and download that one too. Then... I'm going to try that.
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