Meet the man making an AI database that will answer questions about New Orleans history

Joseph Makkos will tell you himself — he's not a rich man.

At first glance, his studio in New Orleans' Central City is inconspicuous. It's slender and two stories high with an auburn facade, squeezed between other flat-roofed buildings on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard. Two window displays leading to the front door bear the patina of a collector's space, showcasing rows of typewriters. 

Makkos, in a navy blazer and pigtail braids topped with a beige Tom Waits-style pork pie hat, opened the door to his studio on a recent, sunny Tuesday morning. During the tour, he walked past a printing press and tables littered with intaglio stamps. Manila papers are buried in red-capped tubes and garbage bags are scattered everywhere.

Since 2013, Makkos has preserved tens of thousands of New Orleans newspapers, including The Times-Picayune — papers that date from 1888 to 1929. The papers were at one point owned by the British Museum, where they survived a Nazi bombing. After a shift in ownership, Makkos found the archives being offered on Craigslist for free. 

The enigmatic Ohio native has a long-standing kinship with print media and history. On YouTube, Makkos, sixteen years younger, reads a poem assembled from a 1963 article while standing by a Royal typewriter at an open mic. For five years, he's made use of his collection of over 20,000 records by DJ-ing throughout the U.S. and the United Kingdom. His stage name, "The Archivist," comes as no surprise.

Makkos is rich — rich with historic knowledge that much of the rest of New Orleans lacks. But he isn't gatekeeping it.

For years, he and his team of creatives, including collaborator Beau Ross and technology advisory Chris Galliano, have been working on an ambitious project that involves using artificial intelligence to create accurate depictions of New Orleans' past. Makkos says the interactive database in the works is expected to be available in an app format that allows users to experience the city's history, including tours, AI videos and high-resolution photos.

The archivist believes the general ways history is taught limits the subject matter's possibilities.

"We read books. We hear podcasts. We watch YouTube videos. We watch movies, and you can go on a tour," Makkos said.

In fact, tourists stagger through the French Quarter every day, searching for a tour guide to chronicle the Lalaurie Mansion, Pirate's Alley and Hotel Monteleone. Makkos noted that these walking tours can at times be in pursuit of entertaining visitors rather than sharing accurate accounts of the famous neighborhood's past.

His project will offer interactive tours based on archives and historical books. Without giving away too much detail before its launch, with certain features slated to come out by the end of the year, Makkos characterized the tour as a Pokémon Go-esque feature in the immersive database.

Searching through other websites that provide online archives, like NewsBank and Newspapers by Ancestry, involves inputting keywords, dates and locations that match the descriptions of an article. Makkos' says this database will work at a more rapid pace, answering users' questions about New Orleans history with a model that's similar to AI chatbots Grok and ChatGPT.

Finding the answers to questions relating to history wasn't always this easy. Creative works, including newspapers, published between 1923 and 1977 were not in the public domain after Congress extended its copyright protection in 1998, according to Duke University. They became accessible in the public domain again in 2019.

"We are scanning at high res, and that's like a boon for public domain," Makkos said. "Because it's like a whole new paradigm to that old information."

Makkos owns a German-made scanner that produces crisp and ornate photographs of newspapers compared to the pixelated, microfilmed ones that appear on NewsBank.

In the 1950s and 60s, microfilm companies rose to fame, offering to take collections from institutions and capture microphotographs of the archives. But some of history was erased during this process, with microfilmers unintentionally cutting off sections of articles. They also used 50 ISO, a black-and-white film, Makkos said, even though color started appearing in newspapers in 1913. 

“There's all these insane things that essentially just have been kept from us due to technological degradation," he explained. 

The photographs and texts of newspapers will not only be of higher quality on his program, but he plans for AI to breathe life into them. 

“Those people can be winking at you and smiling at you," Makkos marveled while describing the potential to humanize archives.

The project comes during a rise in concern for the use of AI, with workplaces alarmed that such vigorous technology threatens to replace careers. A study by Goldman Sachs in December 2024 found that only 6.1% of American companies are using AI to produce their services. 

On a nationwide scale, more are learning to adapt to the digital age in 2025, with mass media corporations like The New York Times and The Guardian recently embracing AI by using it as a tool rather than a takeover. In Louisiana, researchers are studying it with the launch of the $50 million Louisiana Growth Fund and the Louisiana Institute for Artificial Intelligence in February.

Makkos is embracing AI.

Yet some Gen Z-ers want to experience what technology took away from them. Rather than reaching for their iPhones to snap a picture, they are clearing store shelves filled with digital cameras. The crackle of spinning records and the distinctive hiss of a running cassette tape have made a comeback in recent years. 

Makkos' database emerges at a time when some in the younger generation want the old and not the new.

“They want authenticity," Makkos said. "They want something real, something tangible, something that's rooted in a real thing."