RLP 368: AI in the Driver’s Seat – Using Technology to Identify Vehicles in Family Photos

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro, episode 368, AI in the Driver’s Seat-Using Technology to Identify Vehicles in Family Photos. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro. And hi to you, my mom.

Diana (49s):
Hello, my daughter. How are you doing today?

Nicole (53s):
I’m great. What is going on? How’s your book coming?

Diana (57s):
Well, as I have said before, I’m reading a little bit out of Women and the Law of Property in Early America by Marilyn Salmon every day, and so I finished the chapter on divorces and now I’m working on separate estates. And what I am learning is that the colonists were trying to follow English common law, but then they liked to put their own twist on it. So it was an opportunity to change things up if they decided they didn’t really like the way it was being done in England. And of course each colony was different, which I find so fascinating. So I’ll just read one little sentence out of here that I thought it was so interesting.

Diana (1m 37s):
It says, “the dual system of English property law found its way to some American colonies intact.” And then it gets done a little bit and says, “these courts applied new precedents to cases as they arose in the colonies, creating a series of local decisions to assist in clarifying this changing area of the law.” So this is such an interesting fact about common law because that’s what the United States followed was common law found in England. The law could change and it was often based on precedent what a previous jury or previous judge decided. Then that became the way you handled cases going forward. And so it’s so different from the civil law, which is in France and Spain and you know, in the colonies that came from there, the areas like Louisiana where you just had a firm statute and that’s what you followed.

Diana (2m 29s):
You know, you didn’t have this idea of the law evolving or changing. So I’m continuing to really enjoy this book and learning, and I’m excited to put into play some of the things I’m learning about with the locations that my own females lived and looking at the records with kind of a new light. You know, like when you see them getting their dower rights or you know, I have a couple of ancestors who have divorce cases or if they had separate property, you know, it throws a whole new light on it when you’re reading a book like this to understand how these things really shaped women’s lives.

Nicole (3m 10s):
Oh, thanks for that update. Our announcements are that the next Research Like a Pro webinar is by Torhild Shirley, AG, it is called, Tracing Karolius: Norwegian Research on a WWII Evacuee’s Journey.

Nicole (3m 50s):
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Diana (4m 15s):
Well today we’re going to talk about a 52 Ancestor blog post that I wrote, and the theme was wheels. So in looking through my photos and thinking about pictures that I had of cars or stories we had of cars, I chose a really neat photo that has my mother, Anna Mae Kelsey, and she’s just a little girl, probably two years old or maybe three, and she has perched on a sheep and in the background is the family car. So I decided to see what AI could help me with with this analysis and learned more about the Kelsey family. So I turned to a custom GPT for this photo analysis session.

Diana (4m 55s):
And this is a custom GPT developed by Steve Little, and you can get to it through ChatGPT. He created it because he has a paid plan, but any of us can use it. And so it’s titled Genealogy Eyes and you can access it by just going to ChatGPT and then to GPTs and then putting in the search term Genealogy Eyes or often I’ll just put in the creator. If you put in Steve Little it will bring up all of his custom GPTs. So when you click on the start chat, then you see a screen that tells you a little bit about it and it gives you some ideas and it says you can ask things like, what can you tell me about this image? Or Can you analyze the history in this picture?

Diana (5m 36s):
Or how does this image reflect family history? So you don’t even have to say much, you can just put your picture in there and then get started.

Nicole (5m 45s):
That’s great. I love how you can just go to Explore GPTs and then see all different kinds of Genealogy custom GPTs that have been made. And this is a new one that I haven’t tried before, so I’m glad you tipped me off to it. That’s cool that Steve made Genealogy Eyes, like you’re looking at something, that’s a fun name. Yeah. So to try out this GPT, you uploaded a photo of grandma, so your mom, Anna Mae, about two years old, seated on a sheep in front of a family car. What… This photo just cracks me up. She’s just sitting on top of a huge sheep. So that’s fun. And since her dad was a sheep rancher, I guess that makes sense.

Nicole (6m 26s):
They had a lot of sheep. So since the custom GPT already has a lot of instructions given to it by Steve to enable it to do photo analysis, you don’t really need to put in a lot of information in the prompt. The prompt that you used was, “Tell me about the car in this photo, which was taken about 1930.” So part of the benefit of using AI for photo analysis is its ability to take in all the details. For example, we had never noticed the person crouching in the background to the left of the sheep. So it makes perfect sense that Anna Mae’s father would not have perched his young daughter on an animal without being there to hold it.

Nicole (7m 17s):
But yeah, I can see him now. I mean he’s kind of in the shadows, but now that I know that’s a person there, I can see his foot and his, like his jeans that are cuffed at the ankle and his knee, which are not in the shade. And then the rest of him you can see his hand like holding the front of the sheep. So that’s so funny that we, our eye just skips over that because it’s like hard to see the whole person, But we can see his hat too.

Diana (7m 41s):
Exactly. I know. Once you realize he’s there, then all of a sudden he becomes visible. Whereas before you just look at the sheep and the child.

Nicole (7m 49s):
Because it’s so funny to see that whole thing like a baby on a big sheep. Well, AI gave the following description, the image is a charming and slightly whimsical black and white photograph. A young child dressed in a light sleeveless dress is seated confidently a top a large sheep with someone crouched beside possibly helping support the animal. Behind them stands a car solid, boxy, and quintessentially early 1930s in design anchoring the historical context.

Diana (8m 18s):
So that was a great description and like we discussed, just really tipped us off to Grandpa Kelsey is sitting there holding the sheep. And he was a livestock man and interestingly enough, he was known for his expertise in raising sheep and cattle. In 1971, he was inducted into the Southern Idaho Livestock Hall of Fame and a newspaper article describes this part of his life. It says “in 1917, Kelsey purchased his first purebred ram and since that time has been a prominent figure in the livestock field. In the early 1920s, Kelsey purchased one of the first English bred Hampshire Rams allowed in the United States from Henry Finch famous breeder from Soda Springs, Idaho.”

Diana (9m 3s):
So it was fun to find that little snippet from the newspaper and it made me think that maybe this sheep is one of his prize sheep. Or maybe it was just one that was well-mannered enough to let a child sit on for a picture.

Nicole (9m 20s):
Right. You definitely want a well-mannered sheep if you’re gonna put your baby on it. Alright, a word from our Sponsor. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com.

Nicole (10m 4s):
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Nicole (10m 45s):
And since we were curious about the car’s model, we can always ask AI, and this is kind of where AI can excel. It compares that image to others in its training data and knowledge base and available online searching. And then AI gave the following explanation from the visible features. “The car appears to be a late 1920s to early 1930s sedan, likely an American made model. Here’s the breakdown of what stands out, body style: boxy silhouette with a high roof line, straight side panels and a rear hinged backdoor, a rear hinged backdoor, four-door sedan configuration, a common family or utility vehicle style at the time, running board visible. A feature that was phased out by the late 1930s. Fenders and Wheels: distinct bulbus fenders consistent with the 1928 to 1931 Ford Model A, Chevrolet Series AD from 1930, or similar cars from Dodge Brothers or Plymouth.

Nicole (11m 26s):
Spoked wheels suggest the car still retained wood or metal spokes, rather than the pressed-steel wheels that dominated by the mid-1930s. Windows and Trim: Windows have a clear rectangular profile, and the rear passenger door has a small quarter window, typical of the era.

Nicole (12m 5s):
There’s a visible chrome or light-colored trim line along the beltline of the body, a stylistic touch from cars of the period. Probable Model: While exact identification can be tough without grille or hood ornament detail, this car closely resembles a 1930 Ford Model A Tudor or Fordor Sedan. These were mass produced, affordable to the average American family, widely photographed and still common in rural and urban settings alike during the early depression years.” So the part of the car that we can see in the photograph certainly looks very similar to a picture that we found of the 1928 Ford Model A two-door sedan. And chatting with AI, we learned that the two-door sedan has two doors with seating for up to five passengers. The weight is approximately 2,375 pounds and they had produced 376,271 units in 1930 and the price was around $495 if you bought it new. It had a lot of features like a compact design, popular among families for its affordability and practicality.

Diana (12m 51s):
So it was really fun to find a picture of what this car looked like brand new, and it was from the Ford Engineering Laboratory November, 1927 and like taking a look at that, I could see that, yeah, it probably was either that exact model or something very similar. So it was so fun to do a little bit of a deep dive into the car in that picture. Well, just a little bit more about my grandpa and my mom. So she was the youngest of six children and she compiled her father’s history and she wrote, “In 1911, dad bought 40 acres of ground in Burley, Idaho from his father who had bought it at a state land sale around 1907 or 1908.

Diana (13m 34s):
In 1914, dad sold this land, which he’d never seen, and in the fall of 1914 he decided to go to Idaho and try to get into some kind of livestock business, which had been the big ambition of his life. He bought 40 acres of land in a different location at Burley, and on February 16th, 1915, he left Springville with a team and wagon, traveled alone and arrived in Burley February 25th. He cleared the land of sagebrush and raised a crop of wheat and barley that same year.

Diana (14m 17s):
In the fall of 1916, he purchased another forty acres joining the first forty on the west and in 1918 he purchased still another forty acres on the south.” So the interesting thing that I pulled out of that was my mom’s statement that the livestock business was his big ambition. And so that just helps us to see, again, some insight into this photograph about, you know, the importance of his sheep and his business. And I have to agree with AI statement where it said that in the early 1930s, owning a car like the Model A was a significant achievement for many families. Symbolizing progress in modernity, photographs featuring family members with their vehicles were common serving as a testament to their hard work and success during challenging economic times. So the photo of my mother, the sheep, and the car really does represent family, career and prosperity, which is a testament to my grandparents’ sacrifice and hard work.

Diana (15m 4s):
So it was really neat to take that one picture and use AI to give me a little bit more details and more insight about this photo. And looking at my grandfather through the lens of his car, which I think is one of the great values of AI, it’s like having someone looking over our shoulder, giving us new ideas about our research and our photos and our stories. So anyway, I really enjoyed that and I am looking forward to using AI and more photographs to help me figure out more things like, you know, things I hadn’t seen before, like my grandpa crouching behind the sheep. You know, I’m sure in each photo there’s something that our eyes just have not seen because we are so used to just looking at a picture in the same way we always have.

Nicole (15m 49s):
I love that. I think that’s one of the main takeaways from this is that as human viewers of photographs, we can totally miss parts of the photograph just because of the way that our eyes see things. And with part of him being in the shade, we just kind of ignored that section of the photograph. Whereas with AI it has computer vision and so it’s a little bit more comprehensive in what it sees. It sees everything, that can be really helpful. So some more takeaways from this experience that you had are that the custom GPT by Steve little, Genealogy Eyes, is available for anyone to use. It’s free.

Nicole (16m 29s):
Anyone who has a free account at ChatGPT can use this custom GPT that Steve made. Like you said, you have to have a paid account at ChatGPT to make a custom GPT, but you can use other people’s even on the free plan. So everyone should go try this out, get one of your old photos, upload it to Genealogy Eyes and see what kind of analysis can be done to help you see more things in the photo, notice more things and ask it questions like what kind of car is that? That’s a different question. Another takeaway is that really analyzing the possessions of our ancestors can offer insights like the economic status of our ancestors.

Nicole (17m 14s):
I didn’t think of that, but it is really is true. And we have seen so many pictures of our ancestors in this era with their cars. So that part really rang true to me that people wanted to show their achievements and their hard work and taking pictures next to their car. And I think it’s also common to take pictures next to their house. And so you see that more before cars, right?

Diana (17m 40s):
Right.

Nicole (17m 40s):
Pictures in front of a home and then it kind of transitions to pictures in front of the car.

Diana (17m 45s):
Absolutely. And you know, something for another episode would be looking at the clothing. You know, what were they wearing? They often were wearing something very special for a picture, just like we often dress up for a formal picture. And so that can give us some help with identifying their economic status or you know, the time period if we don’t even know the date. So it is fun. And in the blog post, I have another picture of my grandpa Kelsey, that was probably after he moved to Idaho. It looks pretty early, probably 1920s sometime, and he’s got two little lambs in his arms and then a sheep in the background. So it’s fun to see just another picture of him with his animals.

Diana (18m 28s):
And I have a lot of pictures of him with his sheep because that was a big deal, big part of his life. I well remember when I was a little girl going out into, going to his house and in the back it would be sheep shearing season and big bags of wool and these sheep that were really big and fluffy and then they’re sheared and then they are naked. So you know, it’s fun that when I was growing up I got to have a little part of that, of the family history.

Nicole (18m 56s):
Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for sharing your research and to all of our listeners, we hope that you have a great week and we’ll talk to you again next week. Bye-bye.

Diana (19m 5s):
Alright, bye-bye.

Nicole (19m 44s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.