Saturday, October 5, 2024

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Share one way in which you've implemented Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your genealogy research

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1)   Share one way in which you've implemented Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your genealogy research  (You can do more than one if you like!).  What AI tools did you use? 

2)  Share about your implementation of Artificial Intelligence in your own blog post or on your Facebook page.  Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.

 [thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting this topic!] 

Here's mine:

As devoted Genea-Musings readers know, I have bee experimenting with AI for most of 2024, whether it's from a genealogy website (like Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, etc.) or whether it's using one of the many FREE Artificial Intelligence ChatBots (like ChatGPT-4o, Microsoft CoPilot, Google Gemini, Claude Sonnet 3.5, Meta AI, and Perplexity).  

I collected most of my AI blog posts in https://www.geneamusings.com/p/artificial-intelligence-posts.html to help me, and my readers, keep track of what I have done.  So far, the list is heavy on "Ask AI" posts and "Poems/Songs" posts.

1)  My most useful use of Artificial Intelligence has been using FamilySearch Full-Text Search.  When introduced at RootsTech 2024 in late February, it was hailed as a "game-changer."  I totally agree!  There are five main facets to the tool:
  • The AI tool can SEARCH for names and places and keywords in record collections that we did not have every-name or word search before Full-Text Search.  Now we can find our ancestors names in land records, probate records, church records, court records, etc. that have been imaged and are available for FREE at home; note that some collections can be accessed by Full-Text Search at LDS FamilySearch Library and FamilySearch Centers.   
  • The AI tool used by FamilySearch can read the handwritten records andTRANSCRIBE them, and the user can save them or copy and paste them into a document on their computer.  The transcriptino is not perfect - it is easily confused by different columns of text on a page.  Sometimes it cannot transcribe the letters correctly because it doesn't recognize the letter form.  But it is very good at this - My experience is that about 90 to 95% of the words are correct.
  • The AI tool used by FamilySearch can SUMMARIZE the found document for the person searched for.  However it can do only one image at a time (there are usually two pages on a deed image), and the user has to advance the page forward or backward depending on where the rest of the found document is.
  • The AI tool provides a SOURCE citation for, and a link to, the found document.  
  • The user can SAVE the document image, the transcription, the summary, the citation and the link to a PDF file on their computer.  The user should rename the downloaded file so that the user can find it again.
2)  I have been asking the AI Tools (all of the FREE ones noted above) basic questions about "how to do xxxx in genealogy and family history research" in my "Ask AI" series.  The types of questions are endless.  My purpose in this is to check to see if AI can provide detailed answers to research questions, to see if I've been doing things "right," and to provide blog posts for anyone relatively new to genealogy research who searches for information about the topic in a search engine.  

3)  I have been having FUN with the AI tools in create poems and songs about my own research, the lives of my ancestors, and my own life and times.  I create prompts for these using information I have in my ancestor biographies or in lists of events in RootsMagic or Ancestry.com.  Some of the AI tools can also create song lyrics based on the prompts, and I can put those lyrics into www.Suno.com and it will create a song based on the lyrics, and a suggested genre or type of music, and a song title.  

The AI technology is new to many genealogists and family historians, and there have been some hiccups (most notable "hallucinations" when the AI tool assumes things not in evidence or does not have correct information).  The tools are almost always positive about the character and actions of people.  Users need to be careful about some statements. 

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Copyright (c) 2024, Randall J. Seaver

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3 comments:

Linda Stufflebean said...

Randy, You are definitely leading the way, jumping into AI activities with both feet. :)

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

Here's mine: https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2024/10/sngf-share-how-youve-implemented.html

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here's mine: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2024/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-314/