Genealogy and AI

Photo by Gerard Siderius on Unsplash

​You’ve probably been hearing more about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and have wondered about using it in your genealogy research. I have just started experimenting with AI and am not an expert. Instead, I thought I’d share a few reference articles and some thoughts from my own experience. Let’s look.

FamilySearch has provided a comprehensive document explaining various AI options that might benefit  a genealogist as well as the type of information that you can use AI to assist with.
AI Developments in Genealogy and How They Impact You
 
I recently attended a Webinar that was sponsored by Ontario Ancestors. The featured speaker was Thomas MacEntee and he delved into understanding the various Ais available including the differences between the free and fee versions of each. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak on this topic, I recommend it. He provides complex information in a clear manner with extensive notes so that you’ll feel confident in trying AI. He also has published a book available on Amazon. Amazon.com: AI and Genealogy: A Practical Guide to Summarizing, Transcribing, and Translating Historical Documents eBook : MacEntee, Thomas: Books
There was a lot of information to unpack but a couple of items worth mentioning are that AI is not a search engine, your results improve if you can be as specific as possible, and AI is still learning so while it may not do transcribing or translations as well as we’d like, it will improve.
After attending the webinar, I decided to see if it could transcribe a Luxembourg census record for me and then translate it. I used Microsoft Copilot. I uploaded the document and asked it to transcribe and then translate this Luxembourg Census 1895. It didn’t do very well with the actual names of the people but what I did find helpful was that the printed headers provided more clarity for me than my hunt and peck version of trying to translate that information. I was hoping that it would translate a comment on the census record but it did not. I received a message that because of copyright  the free version of Copilot could not provide the translation for the entire document. I think if I provided portions of the census, I would have had better luck.

I also tried a typed French Death Record, asking it to transcribe and translate. This had mixed results as it appeared to make up names and places and only provided a portion of the document. I then tried this again, using the name of the individual and the date. The results were much better except that it chose to translate only the first few lines and the last portion of the document. I find this puzzling but again it could be the limitation of the free version and its perceived copyright limitations. I decided to have one more go with this document and in the same conversation chain, I did ask that it provide the “translation of the entire document in English.” Finally, the results that I was expecting. So perhaps both AI and I need to learn how to communicate with each other. (I’ve had better luck transcribing myself and then using tools like Google Translate to discover the English version of the text. However, with persistence, it appears that you could save yourself that transcribing step to get to the translation result.

I hope this has made you curious about what you can do with AI to help with your genealogy work. I would stick with the more well-known AI tools. Have fun translating and transcribing with AI.