Genealogy sites are auto-writing family stories. But without your voice, those bland, fact-only versions will become the “official” ones. Here’s why it matters, and what you can do instead.
I just steer away from AI completely. It sucks up too much time, trying to ask the “right” questions. I’m a writer and an artist. My art is my creative process. It’s not a tool I need in any way, shape, or form.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this post. Everywhere I turn these days, there are posts extolling the virtues of using AI to generate content based on our research... NOTHING can replace our own work...does it take longer? Yep, it does. Draft after draft, but that's how we learn... The only use I can see for AI generated bios is as a base to start from for those who have no confidence in their ability to write (and I know there are people out there who feel this way)...
Yes, AI can be a tool, but it seems many are now relying on it for everything, rather than picking and choosing tasks it can help with.
Have I used Snagit's Grab it feature, which quickly extracts text from an image? Yep, I have... I too use Google Maps and the erase background feature in various image editing programs.
What worries me as that people new to genealogy (or any other studying), will depend on AI for everything, rather than learning how to do things for themselves. If you don't know, how can you find errors?
While Neil Gaiman may not be a good human being (based on recent evidence), his famous quote about librarians (which I am), stands, is somewhat apt when it comes to AI... "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one." AI is a tool, not an all-in-one solution to all your research and writing.
More than a year ago I tried MyHeritage's “AI Biographer™" tool. In addition to my own comments my husband was quite forthright:
"MyHeritage’s sketch of the life and times of James Cudmore is a disgraceful fraud and an insult to the reader’s intelligence.
“Designed to mine scholarship and appropriate and re-shuffle commonplace opinion on historical matters, the AI squeezes out platitude upon platitude in turgid prose like a butcher making sausages, plop plop plop. The recipe is simple: find a plausible historical context for a person’s actions and announce, breathless with excitement at the discovery, that he had a place in it. In 1914 Joe Blow found himself caught up in one of the great historical upheavals of the twentieth century. He joined the Army. Mick O’Brien, short of spuds, emigrated to Australia in search of a better life, like countless others at the time.
“The scheme employs boiler-plated historical factoids as a cheap substitute for a careful survey of the period and Cudmore’s place in it, with no attempt made to weigh and consider the nature and causes of the historical trends to which he was exposed and to which he supposedly contributed.
“Take the first paragraph. Cudmore was born ‘into a period of colonial expansion’, says the sausage-machine. But wasn’t everyone born in this period born in it? How was Cudmore different? His birth came ‘just’—what does this imply?—three decades after South Australia was established as a British province. So what? And as for free settlement, that was the idea with the Swan River too, wasn’t it? How did James Cudmore’s arrival on the ‘Siren’ symbolise (what?) the influx of settlers seeking new opportunities. That is what new settlers do. They seek new opportunities. And how did his mother’s emigration from Scotland ‘represent’ the Scottish contribution and how and why should it be considered ‘significant’?
“In the next paragraph, the AI boiler-plates Cudmore into a large family, large because of high birth-rates don’t you know, and Jim finds himself farming, rather than developing a career in car manufacturing, say, or aeronautical engineering.
“Quite soon afterwards, James Kenneth, now too busy for a surname, is undergoing significant (?) social changes, forging national identity, creating economic progress, moving towards federation (which, we are told, united separate colonies under one government—well, it would, wouldn’t it?) and simultaneously raising four children.
“Then, after that, with wool a cornerstone, Australia transitioned from its vast roots, especially after WW1, and in Mosman Cudmore genteelly ‘passed away’.
“No doubt in his headlong rush through History James Cudmore came across a certain amount of fraudulent non-scholarship and bad prose. At least he was spared AI.”
My preferred AI is Claude for my writing. Although ChatGPT is getting better, even ‘talking’ to you. I give it what I’ve already written, with grammatical errors included (my grammar sucks) but it’s getting my thoughts out of my head. It comes back with something way better than I could. It does take some tooing and froing when it uses words I’d never use. I’m getting better with my prompts. I ask the AI to use my conversational style of writing, check for grammar and clarity, keep to the facts I have given and not to add anything. I also have to be on the alert for USA vs UK/AU English spelling. I’ve asked it to use UK English, but it still misses some. I then refine the first/second and often third draft to get it how I want. Like with all writing, I can read something weeks later and wonder why I wrote it a certain way.
I also struggle with grammar! I haven’t had to correct ChatGPT on the words it’s using in months and now I have to check it’s memory to see what is has.
I gave Chat GPT a census record to transcribe. To be fair, it did say that the task would be difficult. But the result was a list of names and data that were completely made up! They had simply no relation to the record at all. So I transcribed the first four lines to help with reading the handwriting. And it gave me back the first four lines correctly but all the rest, again, complete fiction! Waste of time.
Yes the columns and rows of a census page are too much for it. FamilySearch specially trained theirs for the 1950 census and then grouped the output by household for humans to check. It did quite well. For tough documents I just read aloud what I see using voice mode
Your advice to engage in back and forth conversation was spot on. Using a combination of A.I. (Grok), Ancestry basic info, I analyzed a postcard that I was lucky to buy on Ebay. It opened up quite a story. Unfortunately, not in my family tree but a great story. FYI, Grok has matured tenfold in the last three months. Things are moving so fast.
It’s stunning and so strange that what was once so hard- write a series of grammatically correct sentences that tell a story- can be done in 3 seconds. So now it’s all about what we want to tell, not the how.
I just steer away from AI completely. It sucks up too much time, trying to ask the “right” questions. I’m a writer and an artist. My art is my creative process. It’s not a tool I need in any way, shape, or form.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this post. Everywhere I turn these days, there are posts extolling the virtues of using AI to generate content based on our research... NOTHING can replace our own work...does it take longer? Yep, it does. Draft after draft, but that's how we learn... The only use I can see for AI generated bios is as a base to start from for those who have no confidence in their ability to write (and I know there are people out there who feel this way)...
You’re welcome. I’m trying to show how AI can assist, because why not have help along the way? I use Google Maps for the same reason.
Yes, AI can be a tool, but it seems many are now relying on it for everything, rather than picking and choosing tasks it can help with.
Have I used Snagit's Grab it feature, which quickly extracts text from an image? Yep, I have... I too use Google Maps and the erase background feature in various image editing programs.
What worries me as that people new to genealogy (or any other studying), will depend on AI for everything, rather than learning how to do things for themselves. If you don't know, how can you find errors?
While Neil Gaiman may not be a good human being (based on recent evidence), his famous quote about librarians (which I am), stands, is somewhat apt when it comes to AI... "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one." AI is a tool, not an all-in-one solution to all your research and writing.
More than a year ago I tried MyHeritage's “AI Biographer™" tool. In addition to my own comments my husband was quite forthright:
"MyHeritage’s sketch of the life and times of James Cudmore is a disgraceful fraud and an insult to the reader’s intelligence.
“Designed to mine scholarship and appropriate and re-shuffle commonplace opinion on historical matters, the AI squeezes out platitude upon platitude in turgid prose like a butcher making sausages, plop plop plop. The recipe is simple: find a plausible historical context for a person’s actions and announce, breathless with excitement at the discovery, that he had a place in it. In 1914 Joe Blow found himself caught up in one of the great historical upheavals of the twentieth century. He joined the Army. Mick O’Brien, short of spuds, emigrated to Australia in search of a better life, like countless others at the time.
“The scheme employs boiler-plated historical factoids as a cheap substitute for a careful survey of the period and Cudmore’s place in it, with no attempt made to weigh and consider the nature and causes of the historical trends to which he was exposed and to which he supposedly contributed.
“Take the first paragraph. Cudmore was born ‘into a period of colonial expansion’, says the sausage-machine. But wasn’t everyone born in this period born in it? How was Cudmore different? His birth came ‘just’—what does this imply?—three decades after South Australia was established as a British province. So what? And as for free settlement, that was the idea with the Swan River too, wasn’t it? How did James Cudmore’s arrival on the ‘Siren’ symbolise (what?) the influx of settlers seeking new opportunities. That is what new settlers do. They seek new opportunities. And how did his mother’s emigration from Scotland ‘represent’ the Scottish contribution and how and why should it be considered ‘significant’?
“In the next paragraph, the AI boiler-plates Cudmore into a large family, large because of high birth-rates don’t you know, and Jim finds himself farming, rather than developing a career in car manufacturing, say, or aeronautical engineering.
“Quite soon afterwards, James Kenneth, now too busy for a surname, is undergoing significant (?) social changes, forging national identity, creating economic progress, moving towards federation (which, we are told, united separate colonies under one government—well, it would, wouldn’t it?) and simultaneously raising four children.
“Then, after that, with wool a cornerstone, Australia transitioned from its vast roots, especially after WW1, and in Mosman Cudmore genteelly ‘passed away’.
“No doubt in his headlong rush through History James Cudmore came across a certain amount of fraudulent non-scholarship and bad prose. At least he was spared AI.”
You can read my full evaluation at
https://anneyoungau.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/myheritage-ai-review-part-2/
What an AI fail! Every sentence makes me more stunned at what it did.
My preferred AI is Claude for my writing. Although ChatGPT is getting better, even ‘talking’ to you. I give it what I’ve already written, with grammatical errors included (my grammar sucks) but it’s getting my thoughts out of my head. It comes back with something way better than I could. It does take some tooing and froing when it uses words I’d never use. I’m getting better with my prompts. I ask the AI to use my conversational style of writing, check for grammar and clarity, keep to the facts I have given and not to add anything. I also have to be on the alert for USA vs UK/AU English spelling. I’ve asked it to use UK English, but it still misses some. I then refine the first/second and often third draft to get it how I want. Like with all writing, I can read something weeks later and wonder why I wrote it a certain way.
I also struggle with grammar! I haven’t had to correct ChatGPT on the words it’s using in months and now I have to check it’s memory to see what is has.
I gave Chat GPT a census record to transcribe. To be fair, it did say that the task would be difficult. But the result was a list of names and data that were completely made up! They had simply no relation to the record at all. So I transcribed the first four lines to help with reading the handwriting. And it gave me back the first four lines correctly but all the rest, again, complete fiction! Waste of time.
Yes the columns and rows of a census page are too much for it. FamilySearch specially trained theirs for the 1950 census and then grouped the output by household for humans to check. It did quite well. For tough documents I just read aloud what I see using voice mode
Your advice to engage in back and forth conversation was spot on. Using a combination of A.I. (Grok), Ancestry basic info, I analyzed a postcard that I was lucky to buy on Ebay. It opened up quite a story. Unfortunately, not in my family tree but a great story. FYI, Grok has matured tenfold in the last three months. Things are moving so fast.
It’s stunning and so strange that what was once so hard- write a series of grammatically correct sentences that tell a story- can be done in 3 seconds. So now it’s all about what we want to tell, not the how.
Bravo, Denyse! Details that reflect human qualities like humor or charm can help turn a recitation of facts into a compelling story.
Thank you for all you do to help us avoid succumbing to the lure of convenience.