An AI-Powered Storytelling Project to Help Save a Historic Public Pool (The Big Pool Preservation Project)

I wanted to share a use case where generative AI is being applied in a very human, grassroots, hyperlocal way: preserving a historic public pool in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The project—The Big Pool Story—uses AI to preserve community memory and advocate for the future of a place that’s mattered to generations. The pool was built in 1945 for Manhattan Project workers and has served as a gathering place for the Oak Ridge community ever since. Now it’s at risk of being demolished due to disrepair.

Why I thought it might be of interest here:

It features Dive AI, a chatbot trained on 80+ years of local records—city council and parks board minutes, press coverage, and more. The idea is to make that civic data easy to explore and emotionally engaging.

It runs on OpenAI, Pinecone and a private VPS stack with Cloudflare/WP—custom-tuned and updated frequently.

Fully public, self-funded, and built to invite the community into its own history.

The project’s almost a year old now. If tools like NotebookLM had been around at the start, parts of this would’ve been way easier—but doing it from scratch taught me a lot.

If you’re working on AI for civic or public-interest projects, or just curious about how AI can help people reconnect with place and memory, I’d love your feedback or perspective.

I’m looking to retool and apply what I’ve learned to support other mission-driven storytelling projects—especially those focused on community preservation, civic memory, and public engagement.

Whether it’s small grassroots initiatives or larger-scale civic platforms, my aim is to help others use AI meaningfully—to organize stories, connect data, and create tools that people actually use and trust.

https://thebigpoolstory.com

I built the site and project with folks here in my community. AI created this post.