Virtual Veterans AI project wins VALA Award for Queensland library

ORCA Opti has marked the success of its recent acquisition by securing the 2025 VALA Award for an AI-driven project developed for the State Library of Queensland.

The project, named Virtual Veterans, features a conversational AI chatbot that personifies a World War I soldier known as Charlie, enabling users to engage interactively with Australia's ANZAC history. The chatbot serves as an interface through which individuals, particularly younger generations, can inquire about various aspects of the Great War, with the responses designed to provide historical information as well as guidance to digitised archival collections.

The VALA Award, a biennial accolade, recognises the innovative application of information and communication technologies within libraries, archives, galleries, museums, and similar institutions across Australia with a focus on improving customer engagement and service. In this award cycle, the State Library of Queensland was acknowledged jointly with Monash Health.

Virtual Veterans was initially developed by Queensland-based TalkVia AI, which was acquired by ORCA Opti. The chatbot's responses are supported by an extensive dataset, including 1.3 million words from the State Library of Queensland's digitised First World War collections, over 50,000 Queensland newspaper articles from the period of 1914 to 1918 via Trove, and the full 12-volume set of the Australian War Memorial's 'Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918' authored by Charles Bean.

The development process, which spanned three months, involved the creation of the fictional character Charlie, the establishment of topic guidelines, and the training of an AI model tailored to these criteria. Additionally, the development team enabled the model to reference and retrieve relevant information from partnered databases. Testing was conducted by TalkVia AI, staff from the State Library, and stakeholders including educators and veterans.

Security response

Shortly after deployment, the chatbot experienced attempts at misuse and jailbreaking, with some users seeking to elicit responses outside the scope of the system's intended programming. The State Library of Queensland and TalkVia AI promptly carried out an audit and undertook remedial work to restrict opportunities for such off-topic interactions.

Central to these efforts was the implementation of ORCA Opti AI Guardian, previously known as RedTie AI, which includes a collection of advanced tools for stress-testing conversational AI systems. Among these, the Menace tool was used to conduct more than 10,000 adversarial testing scenarios targeting Charlie's AI foundations, simulating threats such as prompt injections, persona manipulation, and chaining exploits.

The security audit also integrated ORCA Opti Warden, which provides real-time defences against over 30 recognised attack vectors, including attempts at data extraction and persona hijacking, all without impacting user experience. ORCA Opti Profiler was installed to ensure ongoing monitoring and intelligence gathering on chatbot activity, identifying suspicious or anomalous behaviour.

As a result of the audit and mitigation actions, the Virtual Veterans chatbot has been enhanced with security mechanisms designed to minimise the risk of hacking or jailbreaking. The system continues to be under regular observation, and no further jailbreak incidents have been recorded since the introduction of ORCA Opti's security components.

Company perspective

We're thrilled to have received this award and this case study marks such an important story in modern AI project integrations," she said. "Organisatins are raring to go with AI projects but often are unaware of the security implications that goes along with it. "The expertise we have built can provide companies with peace of mind across policies, tasks breaches and incident response. With ORCA Opti's AI guardian we are connecting and operating core business operations with secure AI."

According to ORCA Opti Founder and Managing Director Kathryn Giudes, the project not only demonstrates the scope of capability the firm is developing but also highlights a broader need for organisations to consider security implications when deploying AI solutions."

The Virtual Veterans project remains in use at the State Library of Queensland as part of ongoing initiatives to increase engagement with digital archival resources, and continues to be monitored for security and performance.