Today, you can’t open your ‘Stack (or any other media) without seeing headlines warning about the end of our livelihoods AI. I completely agree that artificial intelligence has risks, particularly in the areas of sentience. However, after reading about using Perplexity AI for genealogy from
here on SubStack, I decided to give it a try. Her post is brilliant. Please read it here.Considering using AI led to some interesting questions. As a writer, it felt wrong to utilize any help in writing about my ancestors. After all, if I use AI to write my piece, it’s not really “my” piece, is it? However, my writing is as much about leaving behind a story as it is about creative writing. This led me to consider my Why. Why do I feel compelled to write about my ancestors’ lives?
I write about my ancestors to put life into the family trees I’ve filled. I hope that leaving stories instead of fact sheets will allow our family history to come alive for the generations after me. A profile filled with facts may not stay in a memory, but a house being torched in disagreement might.1
Writing profiles on WikiTree, I found myself wanting to write more than just who, when and where. To do that, I have spent hours reading town histories, scholarly papers and countless Wikipedia articles. I’ve done a deep dive on why lifelong farmers might have left their farms (my GGrandfather, Alexander Campbell Howe), what mines were local to Scales Mound, Illinois (my 2nd GGrandfather, John Rogers) and even how many weeks a typical sailing voyage took in the 1770s.
To some extent I do love the research piece of my work. For a girl who had to take Western Civ 4 times in order to pass, I am amazed at my growing love of history. However, when looking at my “Why?”, I realized that I want to get the stories written, not spend the rest of my life doing research. For me, this is where Perplexity AI comes in.
For my latest piece on John Mark, I used AI to do some of the research. For my purposes, one of the best features is that you can upload a file for the tool to analyze. You do this by clicking on the +Attach on the bottom left of the prompt.
First, I took his WikiTree profile and printed it to a .pdf file. You could easily use another source for your profile text; what matters is providing dates, places and relationships so that you have a base for the AI to start with. Then I used the following prompt:
From the facts, dates, places and familial relationships of John Mark in the attached .pdf file, create a detailed biography. Using historical sources on the internet, include real details of what life would have been like for this Scots Irish immigrant and his family at the time of the American Revolution as well as the decades afterwards in Gilsum, New Hampshire. Create a professional document in the CMS style with sources at the end.
With that prompt entered, I picked sources that I wanted to pull from by selecting “focus” (bottom left of the text box) to choose where I wanted the AI to search for the information.
My query came back with a nicely written biography complete with details true to the period and location. I didn’t use all of it because there were a ton more references to the American Revolution than I needed, and I rewrote what I did use to add details of his life that weren’t included (like that fire I mentioned).
That said, the AI provided a great start in order to put my ancestor into the time and place of his story, complete with references at the end. For me, it is important to credit my sources, so this was a big plus. These sources also served as a starting place to research further if I wanted more detail. To see my end result please go to this post on John Mark.
Have you used any AI tools to benefit your genealogy? If so, which ones have worked best and how? Feel free to join in.
I've not used that AI. I also am amazed at my love of history now when I hated it as a child and even in college where I flunked World History. Not only did it bring down my grade average, but it was an elective! I could have chosen something else but my bro-in-law at the time recommended it!! I've not held that against him and have often wanted to take that class again just to see why I had such a hard time!! Anyway, I got sidetracked there! Good post. I'll be sharing my fav AI soon.
I admit reluctance to using AI to do nuts and bolts genealogical research, but I have used it to give context to things I've come across in my research, and also a few times to find potential places to look when I've hit a brick wall. I look at is as just another tool in my toolbox, but more like a cherry pitter than a chef's knife.