A reader emailed me with that question - "Where are you going with the Artificial Intelligence work you are pursuing on your Genea-Musings blog?"
1) My longish response was:
"I've worked 38 years on researching the lives of my ancestral families, with dates, places, relationships, events, records, sources and notes and all I have is a really big family tree with over 74,000 profiles in RootsMagic software and in online trees at Ancestry and MyHeritage.
"The original lifetime plan was to write a series of books about my ancestry (perhaps one for each great-grandparent) and descendants of key ancestors (perhaps selected immigrants to America and their descendants). That turned into a really big task.
"In recent years, I've been told by my brothers, children, cousins, grandchildren, etc. that they don't really want to read 500-page books - they will just sit on the shelf unread until someone throws them out. They want audio and video to hear and watch interesting stories and scenes. Do they want those about boring (hah!) ancestors who lived three generations ago (and what about ten generations ago?)? I hope so!
"I don't have many photos or stories of my ancestors before my great-grandparents, except in rare cases. I do have records of ancestors back through ten generations or more and they can tell a story when presented in chronological order. Those records have been used to create genealogical sketches of many of my ancestors on my blog, and are collected in the 52 Ancestors/Relatives Biographies web page.
"I started exploring the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to perform genealogical functions two years ago, testing it for summarizing records, transcribing records, translating text, describing and analyzing a photograph, answering questions about genealogy processes, creating poems and songs for fun, and more.
"Now I'm exploring using Artificial Intelligence tools to turn my dry, fact-filled but boring 'just the facts' ancestor genealogical sketches into engaging, inspiring, and informative AI-assisted biographies, stories, poems, songs, podcasts and videos about my ancestors that include social history, geography, and national events.
"My experience to date is that if I tell the AI tools to only use information in the genealogical sketches that the AI tools do not make up erroneous information. I review the material provided by the AI tool and edit it if necessary to stay true to the historical record. I prefer Anthropic Claude for the biographies because it seems to be the best 'writer' and I want consistent format and content across the biographies and stories.
"The overarching goal is to create stories about the ancestors of my relatives, including myself, that will appeal to my relatives but are based on historical facts and experiences that will help them understand the lives and times of their forebears.
"I think that every historical person is unique and has a unique story with events, and the life of that person should be described and celebrated, especially my ancestors. Of course, other researchers can do their own ancestors - mine are interesting enough!
"I was an aerospace engineer in my earlier years and can write complete, sourced and boring genealogical sketches with 'just the facts' about a historical person. I 'wonder' a lot about life in other times, but I'm not creative, or experienced, enough to write historical fiction. So using Artificial Intelligence to 'help me' write interesting and engaging stories is just like hiring a creative writer to do the same task, but a lot cheaper.
"My genealogical research has shifted a bit - from pursuing more records of the persons in my family tree every day, and writing about them on my Genea-Musings blog, to exploring ways to tell the stories of my ancestors, and telling the stories on my Genea-Musings blog, so that my relatives can enjoy them after I'm gone. I'm still doing genealogy research 'work' but now I'm doing more family history and stories 'work.'"
2) What have I accomplished in the past year?
- Updated and added more details to some of the genealogical sketches that I developed based on my genealogy research and posted on my blog since 2014 - over 500 of them (see 52 Ancestors/Relatives Biographies).
- Asked many questions about genealogy and family history processes, historical events, occupation details, etc. that draw on the event history and social history of the times and places my ancestors lived. I wrote blog posts for many of these questions.
- Created an ABC (Ancestor Biography Creation) process to use the genealogical sketch of an ancestor to write a biography, create a poem and a song, create an audio overview, and create family stories (historical fiction since I don't know what really happened every day in a life) to help describe and celebrate the life of the ancestor. The AI tools are much better than I am in summarizing genealogical sketches and writing engaging narrative.
I now have about 36 ABC Biographies that also link to the genealogical sketch, the poem, song and podcast for the selected ancestor. I write two ABC Biographies each week, and plan to complete them through my third great-grandparents (so 62 biographies).
- Created AI-assisted poems, songs on Suno.com, and podcasts no NotebookLM from the genealogical sketches about my close ancestors and have completed about 50 of the close ancestors. I write one blog post each week to publish the poem, song and podcast.
- Created historical fiction family stories about "Day in the Life," "Life Memoirs," "Ten Questions and Answers," "Reminiscences," "Dialogues," etc. that describe how life was for my ancestors in the times and places they resided. I am aiming for at least two family history stories for each ancestor.
- Created YouTube videos (using Canva.com) to add the AI-assisted podcasts and songs, and I am uploading those plus the NotebookLM video overviews to my YouTube channel.
- All of my Artificial Intelligence posts can be found on my Randy's AI and Genealogy web page in categories.
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