In this episode of the Research Like a Pro Genealogy podcast, Diana and Nicole explore using AI to find research questions and write objectives. They discuss how AI can analyze your family tree data and suggest potential research questions. Diana shares her experience using a GEDCOM file with a custom GPT to analyze her pedigree for the Isabella Weatherford project. She explains how to create a GEDCOM file and use the Family Tree Expert custom...
Welcome back to our “Research Like a Pro with AI” series! In this blog post. I’ll explore how artificial intelligence can enhance our locality research process. Using examples from my ongoing Isabella Weatherford project, I’ll demonstrate how AI helped create a comprehensive locality guide for Dallas County, Texas, in the 1870s. Why Locality Guides Matter Before diving into the AI-assisted process, let’s remind ourselves why locality guides are crucial: They provide historical context for our...
In this episode of the Research Like a Pro Genealogy Podcast, Nicole and Diana interview Steve Little, the National Genealogical Society Artificial Intelligence Program Director. Steve explains what Large Language Models are and their strengths, including summarization, extraction, generation, and translation. He discusses how AI can be used in genealogy to extract names, dates, and relationships from text, assist with genealogical writing and translating documents, transcribe printed and handwritten text, and transform text to different...
Welcome back to my series on Isabella Weatherford! In part one, I used AI to explore research questions and write the research objective: The objective of this research phase is to examine the economic and social conditions in Dallas County, Texas, in the early 1870s and their influence on Isabella D Weatherford’s life and marriage prospects. Isabella was born on 4 Mar 1858 in Missouri; she first married John H. Carpenter on 16 Jan 1874...
In this episode of the Research Like a Pro podcast, Diana and Nicole interview Mark Thompson, a professional genealogist specializing in digitizing and archiving family memorabilia and genetic genealogy. Mark shares his expertise on using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to analyze family photographs. Here are some key points from the interview: Benefits of AI face tagging: AI face tagging is a huge time saver and makes it easier to find photos in your digital archive....
In our Research Like a Pro with AI workshop last week, I taught a lesson about using AI to help with writing. Part of that lecture focused on writing proof arguments, and the example I used was a DNA proof argument. I’m excited to share a discovery I made about using Claude.ai to generate descendancy diagrams of DNA matches! These diagrams are an important part of any proof argument incorporating DNA evidence. In the process...
In this episode, Diana and Nicole discuss the advancements in AI tools for transcribing handwritten text. They highlight FamilySearch’s new full-text search feature that uses AI to transcribe deed and probate images, and they demonstrate how ChatGPT and Claude can quickly transcribe uploaded images, significantly reducing the time needed for such tasks. They explain that before May 13, 2024, file upload capabilities were exclusive to the paid version of ChatGPT, but the newly released...
As genealogists, we often struggle to narrow down our research focus and formulate clear objectives. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a helpful tool in this process. Let’s explore how to use AI to find research questions and write objectives, using my Isabella Weatherford project as an example. In our recent Research Like a Pro with AI Workshop, I followed the RLP process and explored ways AI could help streamline tedious tasks as well as...
In this episode, Diana and Nicole discuss Diana’s research identifying Clemsy (Cline) Weatherford’s origins despite record loss in northeastern Arkansas. She began with extensive documentary research, identifying Clemsy’s likely family: father John C. Cline, siblings Jacob, John, and Mahala, and half-siblings Jesse, Abner, Ann, and Amanda. She then incorporated DNA evidence, using tools like the Leeds Method and network graphs with Gephi software. Nicole clustered DNA matches for her cousin Lucretia, confirming Mahala (Cline) Shockley...
In the ever-evolving field of genetic genealogy, researchers are constantly seeking innovative ways to analyze and interpret DNA data. Airtable.com, a versatile database platform, is a flexible solution for logging DNA evidence in a genealogy research project. Airtable introduced AI tools for paid users earlier this year, and now, as of July 2024, AI tools are also available for free users! Update: the “generate text” Airtable AI feature is not for the free plan, but...
