AI Imagines Ohrid in the 27th Century: “Ohrid Tales of the Future” Brings Science Fiction and Cultural Memory into One Experiment
In September 2022, the city of Ohrid became the setting for an unusual thought experiment: what if artificial intelligence could be trained not only to write science fiction, but to “predict” a plausible everyday life for Ohrid a thousand years from now—complete with its ecosystems, infrastructure, cultural transformation, and the social tensions of a radically altered civilization?
That question sits at the core of the illustrated sci-fi novel Ohrid Tales of the Future (Ohridski predanija na idninata), presented as a work generated entirely by AI. According to Prof. Dr. Anis Sefidanis, the project aimed to fuse two domains that rarely meet in a single production pipeline: the computational modeling mindset of modern AI systems and the deep historical identity of Ohrid as a cultural landscape.
As described in interviews at the time, the concept starts from a technical premise: contemporary AI can be used to simulate and extrapolate patterns within complex systems. By combining structured and unstructured insights about Ohrid’s past—its ecosystem, infrastructure, and cultural evolution—the system was used to construct a distant-future projection of the city in the 27th century, imagined as a world where multiple civilizations cohabit alongside hybrid cyborg entities, and where the daily life of Ohrid’s inhabitants comes with entirely new kinds of challenges. Иновативност
The novel’s narrative frame is overtly science-fictional. In a storyline published in connection with the project, an interplanetary conflict leads to a break between Earth and an independent human colony on Mars. A thousand years later, Ohrid receives a message from the “lost colony,” inviting a delegation—only for the mission to collapse into catastrophe, pushing the story into mystery, diplomacy, and survival under the shadow of advanced post-human systems. Terni5+1
What made the project notable in the Macedonian context was not only the theme, but the production claim: that both text and images were generated through AI methods trained on “big data” spanning science-fiction topics and Ohrid-related inputs, using deep learning workflows intended to produce outputs that are unique relative to the training examples. Иновативност+1
In public explanations, Sefidanis emphasized the infrastructure behind the experiment: an NVIDIA supercomputer available in the Sefidanis offices in Ohrid, used to train the models for generating text as well as future-Ohrid imagery, with students supporting key parts of the process—especially the long, practical work of identifying data sources, preprocessing, and preparation that real-world AI systems require. Terni5+2Terni5+2
The project also positioned itself as a methodological statement about evaluation. Beyond preparing data, the student team reportedly contributed to putting the final output through a classic “Turing test” framing—human assessment of whether the system’s behavior and results present as convincingly intelligent. And, critically, the project’s central constraint was described as a deliberate “no human intervention” rule inside the creative artifact itself: the stated goal was to produce a Macedonian literary-and-artistic work that is fully generated by a robot/AI system. Terni5
The novel was promoted in Ohrid on September 16, 2022, and was presented as a collaboration between Prof. Sefidanis (UIST “St. Paul the Apostle,” Faculty area covering machine intelligence and robotics) and a student team. Terni5
Within the wider Sefidanis portfolio, Ohrid Tales of the Future was not treated as a one-off media moment, but as part of a broader trajectory: building AI systems that can operate with local language, local culture, and local historical context. In the same period, Sefidanis’ team described using the same supercomputing infrastructure to develop Macedonian speech-recognition capabilities for the “Virtual Prlichev” smart monument—an AI/VR-linked public installation centered on a high-realism avatar of Grigor Prlichev, synchronized with Macedonian speech and designed for interactive communication. Иновативност+2Tocka+2
From a strategic perspective, the project messaging also pointed to democratization: work toward cloud infrastructure so that others could train AI systems on their own data for diverse needs—from industrial process automation, to scientific research, to the aesthetic applications of new digital arts. Иновативност+1
Media interest at the time reflected a wider public curiosity that still feels contemporary: when AI can generate text and images at scale, what does originality mean—and what happens when a city’s identity becomes training data for a speculative future? The Ohrid Tales of the Future experiment offered one answer: treat AI not as a replacement for human culture, but as an instrument for cultural projection—an engine that can remix memory, geography, and imagination into scenarios that challenge, inspire, and sometimes unsettle.
Sources (original publication dates)
- Kaков е Охрид од 27 век? Открива професорот Анис Сефиданис со помош на вештачка интелигенција — Inovativnost.mk — September 24, 2022. Иновативност+3Иновативност+3Иновативност+3
- Во македонски „sci-fi“ роман целосно генериран од AI, киборзи владеат со Охрид (Radio MOF content mirrored via RSSing) — September 19, 2022 (promotion noted as September 16, 2022). Terni5+4Terni5+4Terni5+4
- По нецели два дена, виртуелниот споменик на Григор Прличев во Охрид е вандализиран — Meta.mk — August 12, 2022. Meta.mk
- (Видео) Дигиталниот споменик на виртуелен Прличев којшто беше поставен во Охрид, по 48 часа вандализиран — Tocka.com.mk — August 12, 2022. Tocka
- Reference confirming Deutsche Welle (DW) Macedonian segment: citation of Како би изгледал Охрид во 27. век? (listed as 2023) in Годишен зборник 2024 / Yearbook 2024 (Goce Delcev University e-Library). e-lib.ugd.edu.mk
