ARTIFICIAL intelligence is infiltrating the AFL in myriad ways and being used by every club in some capacity, including at Collingwood under Craig McRae's watch. Now a Magpies legend, who starred over 100 years ago, has been brought back to life.  

Les 'Flapper' Hughes was a giant of Collingwood in the 1910s and 1920s and one of the first celebrity publicans in Melbourne. 

In the first exhibition of its kind in Australian sport, the Magpies' Hall of Famer is the central figure in a multidisciplinary exhibition called Flapper Said: Exploring the Future of Conversational AI at Deakin University. 

Collingwood supporters have always loved a larger-than-life figure or a larrikin. From Dane Swan in more recent times to Darren Millane in the 1990s to Phil Carman, all the way back to Lou Richards, who embodied the black and white spirit. They are one of them.

Hughes fit the bill at the start of the 20th century. 

He stood six foot two inches, which is average for a midfielder today, but made him one of the tallest players in the entire VFL at that time. 

Across 225 games in 15 seasons, ‘Flapper' led the Magpies' ruck division and played a key role in three premierships in 1910, 1917 and 1919, earning state selection for Victoria many times and captaining the Big V in 1919. 

Collingwood didn't have a best and fairest in that era, but a commissioned research project in 2017 looking at documents and media reports at the time revealed Hughes would have won three of them. The E.W. Copeland Trophy was instituted in 1932, but the best and fairest counts started five years earlier. 

Like all larger-than-life figures, footy was only one part of his story. Before footballers owning and running pubs became a thing, Hughes was the publican at the Royal Derby Hotel in Fitzroy. 

Now you can see what that era was like, both on-field and off-field in ‘Flapper Said', where the technology allows visitors to directly converse with the VFL great, who then responds in real time with a mix of sharp wit and depth to prove a history lesson with flair.  

Dr Russell Kennedy from Deakin University's School of Communication and Creative Arts and Motion Lab is the great grandson of Hughes, so through his family tree, connections, the support of the Collingwood Football Club archive and the Magpies' historian Michael Roberts, Hughes' personality in the exhibition has been created to be what he portrayed in his pomp.

"The project probably took close to two years now. I've been working on it as a research project with Deakin University with a research assistant who has exceptional AI knowledge and ability and skills," Kennedy told AFL.com.au this week.

"It came about through our family connection with Les, who was my great grandfather. There's not a lot about him on record, apart from our family collection, which I've got all of the artifacts and these long service certificates and photographs, which are on display as part of the exhibition. 

"So the idea is that it's it connects ephemeral memorabilia with an opportunity to actually have a conversation with the man himself. We've got a big screen on one wall and there's two locations. One is Victoria Park, and we've recreated Victoria Park with the old grandstand, which we've built from evidence on some of his certificates. 

"The other environment is the Royal Derby Social Club, where he was probably one of Melbourne's first celebrity football publicans. Now there's plenty of them – and there's been hundreds of them since him – but back in those days, Les was one of the early ones. 

"The unique part is the way this software works that we've been using is you create a personality profile. I've done that basically from anecdotal evidence, from family members who have told me stories, but also from Michael Roberts, who has written quite a bit, as has [Herald Sun journalist] Glenn McFarlane. They've documented his personality, which is quite interesting. They claimed that he was one of the best natured footballers ever to play the game. Larger than life is how he was remembered in every sense of it."

Flapper Said: Exploring the Future of Conversational AI runs at Deakin University's Burwood campus until June 10.