Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Do You Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools?

  From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  How do you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools to help you understand the lives, history, and geography associated with your family and y our ancestors, that aid your genealogy and family history research?

2)  Please share the ways (at least one way!) that you use AI tools in your genealogy and family history research.

3) Please share your post or information as a comment or in your own blog post!

Here's mine:

I use AI quite often.  Almost every day. My favorite at this time is Google Gemini.  It is convenient because I am always in Google Chrome, and it is actually quite good.  I use Gemini to transcribe documents (Yes, I always proofread the AI work carefully!), answer questions about my ancestors' jobs, explain legal or medical terms, explain military rank, provide historical events for time lines, etc.  All of these details help in writing my blog posts.  

I also use Gemini for personal questions, too.  How to best store potatoes; how to clear the data on an old Motorola cell phone; and how to insert a text box in Google Docs is just a few of the questions I have asked Gemini in just the last couple of weeks.  I have also used AI to write cover letters for job applications, prepare forms, and most importantly, to ask who was the cast in Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" music video.  Because inquiring minds want to know.  When I wanted sonogram pictures of my puppy (don't judge me - it was a Facebook trend), I asked Gemini, and it referred me to Microsoft's Bing Image Creator to make the images for free.  They turned out adorable.

I do occasionally use ChatGPT, usually for images or if Gemini is having a bad hallucination day.   I ran into an issue with Gemini once about creating a timeline of my nephew's life.  Gemini continually printed incorrect dates, names, and other things even when I pointed out the errors.  That's when I moved over to Chat GPT and it did a great timeline for me without all the hallucinations or errors.  

Sometimes I use Claude. I have had good luck with its transcription of documents.

I know I do not use AI to its full potential.  I have not paid for any subscription plans - I only use the free plans.  So far that has been all I have needed. I do not understand all the different versions for images, etc. because I haven't researched them yet.  I have not branched out to the Family Search Full-Text Search (though I want to!). It is on my to do list to look into other AI sites and see what they have to offer.

For me, AI has improved my daily life.  I have embraced the technology and look forward to using it more.