You CAN use ChatGPT for genealogy (with accuracy)! Here's how

Despite ChatGPT horror stories, you can use it successfully for your genealogy! Here's how to use it and avoid the pitfalls.
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#genealogy #familyhistory #chatgpt

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

📌Explore this resource that can help you find more about your ancestors: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bpKbmYiFfclpi8k

[@mareeevans5746]

I use a very clear prompt for what I want to write and then include the fact list report from my genealogy software. This is one I use a lot as I am currently writing a book for relatives, and it does a pretty good job. You always have to edit and make adjustments but it is such a great starting place. You are a family historian writing a book to share what you have researched about your ancestors and any interesting members of the family. You are writing this book as a set of individual biographies rather than a single story. You are aiming to write this book to engage members of the family that are not overly interested in family history so you want to use an engaging narrative style of writing telling the story of each person rather than just a list of dates and places and dry facts. It is ok to give historical context, make some fair assumptions about what they may have been thinking or why they may have acted a certain way, and use the research to paint a picture of the person for the reader, but you MUST NOT add erroneous facts or just make stuff up. Everything you say must be based on the researched information and historical context.

[@ShineKelly]

Amy! This was an excellent and useful explanation of chatGPT, its workings and applications. I know you have done it in a family history context but the way you have presented it has supported my understanding of why this is such a hot topic in education right now where there is debate around chatGPT being a positive or negative resource for students. Lots of fear and misunderstanding can be eased by what you have explained and show to be a powerful tool with wide spread applications. Great job!! I will be recommending this video to my non-genealogy work mates to share these insights with them (as well as being a family history geek I also work in education in New Zealand) Thank you!

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Thank you for the kind words! There is so much misunderstanding of what ChatGPT is (and isn’t). I really think that if we take the time to understand it, it can be quite useful.

[@digitlhand]

I’m a researcher in the field and this introduction was an excellent summary for the public.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Thank you so much!

[@khangvutien2538]

I fully agree. This is one of the most accurate and simple explanation of ChatGPT. Bravo.

[@farmcat3198]

Another agree! Having worked on context-based text analytics products in the past, this provided an excellent basic understanding of how natural language analytics systems work.

[@s.wilson6770]

Thank you for this. Ive been doing genealogical research for over 25 yrs and this is new info to me. Thank you again

[@democrat102]

Amy, in all honesty, I learned more about the basics of ChatGPT from your video here than any of the ones I have viewed that were made by CIS scholars. Thank you.

[@maureentaphouse5206]

I was just about to write the same comment. Although I have no interest in using these technologies I do like to know what they are and what they are used for simply to keep myself educated. Thank you Amy.

[@katheyfarley378]

I am going to try this right away. I have been doing genealogy for years, and I've been wanting to write my ancestors' stories but it is very laborious. Thank you so much for bringing this to the genealogy community. The charting aspect is useful too. Thank you so much for sharing this.

[@gshenaut]

Interesting and very useful article. My own use of ChatGPT has been for idea generation, especially in the domain of fiction writing, where the hallucinations matter less. One current deficiency is that interactions are size-limited, and if you are working with larger documents or datasets, it is sometimes very tricky to figure out how to slice things up while maintaining continuity. It is also relevant to point out that ChatGPT, in spite of not being a search engine (by the way, Google isn't the only or the best search engine out there), does contain a not insignificant amount of information. The problem is that there's no way to tell whether output is based on valid information or not. One potential method of improving this that I read about is to use ChatGPT itself to compare a reasonable sample of outputs to a given prompt generated by different instances of ChatGPT. The logic here is that facts that are training-based will be relatively constant (i.e., signal), while made-up facts (i.e., noise) will vary, so the comparison will be able to filter out the noise to produce a more accurate signal. This filtering could be fully automated as part of a future chat app. (The icing on the cake for me of this video was that Lawrence County, Ohio is also an important location in my own family tree.)

[@chrismoule7242]

Brilliant, and lucidly presented. Thank you.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the video.

[@willmitchell2553]

Enjoyed your presentation and you look Great those colors definitely suit you. Keep up the great work 😊

[@suzanneflowers2230]

Thank you, Amy, for sorting this out. The one thing I do wish, though, is that if AI does not have access to the info being asked about, it would reply something like, "I don't know," instead of making stuff up.

[@mareeevans5746]

Another really helpful use I have found for it is writing emails to send to family members or DNA matches that you want to collaborate with.

[@leegreen287]

Wow! I just started searching for information about getting into genealogy and this is the first video that 'took my fancy'. I've also been looking heavily into Chat Gpt purely out of interest. Your video was not only very informative regarding genealogy, but also a massive eye opener about Chat Gpt!. Thank you very much

[@RichBobo]

This is a terrific explanation that gives guidelines that are both specific to one type of use case - and general for any use! Bravo.

[@tw9535]

You just explained ChatGPT better than computer guys do.... excellent! Everything you explained is so spot on. It is also good at writing, translating and correcting small chunks of computer code. I think that might be what it is still best at. Your advice is so good.... hope everyone takes it. ChatGPT can be a big time saver in some instances.

[@ward26102]

I wrote a simple script for ChatGPT that allows me to post the script, then copy and paste source info from an Ancestry census record, and it creates a perfectly formatted citation in the Evidence Explained style. I struggled until I learned I had to feed it a template first.

[@kathy_funk]

What an excellent video! I learned so much and it's really got the wheels turning in my brain now. I love the way you presented the information and how you gave concrete examples that we can learn from. Thank you! I've bookmarked this video and will return again and again.

[@jaymm165]

Thank you for presenting this wonderful insight into what ChatGPT is and isn’t. I've been using it to help pull my stories together and using the right prompt is key. Im on a mission to get my stories done as age creeps up on me and time is running out. This is a quick way to get the story, then tweak it to suit my style and check the facts are correct. One still needs to edit, edit, edit. 😊

[@katev3832]

Great ideas! Thank you, Amy! I love the idea of feeding the facts and letting it organize them into an interesting narrative! Thanks for helping us uderstand both the power and the limitations of ChatGPT ❤

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

You are so welcome!

[@dmh20002]

best explanation I’ve seen of how to approach chatgpt for nontechnical users. Very concise and accurate l

[@deborjhablackwell6162]

Beautifully explained! Thank you so very much!

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

You are so welcome!

[@bridgetcampbell6629]

This was super-duper helpful. Thank you so much!

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

So glad it was helpful for you!

[@Sparkle4Us]

Great info ❤❤❤❤

[@patriciahunt4046]

Wow that last tip re the table was really useful. thanks!

[@djsvarietychannel9664]

I found an old picture with many former MLB players from a long time ago and I wanted to know when the photo could have been taken, so I told chatgpt the names and chatgpt made a table with their birth and death dates to show me when exactly it could have been taken. Cool stuff

[@annefarrington1883]

Amy Johnson Crow! You are THE BEST. Thanks so much for addressing this topic, and the helpful comments your video has elicited.

[@hallenw]

Amy, you’re a very good speaker. Obviously very intelligent.

[@tinameredith8548]

This is fabulous and described so well. Thank you for your expertise in explaining this subject material.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Glad it was helpful!

[@OfficialBigDaddyBC]

I’ve only dabbled with chatGPT thought I could use it for something like my genealogy. This was a great educational video. Thank you so much!

[@TheLordOfNothing]

I have used ChatGPT for some of my research. I gave it what I knew and copied and pasted chunks of my family history document and told it to spot any discrepancies. Extremely useful.

[@LindaSchreiber]

Did it actually work to spot potential discrepancies?

[@TheLordOfNothing]

@@LindaSchreiber Yes. Long story. The family history document (Pickett Family of Georgia, USA) took 9 months to make. It was something like 20 pages and I was worn out after making it, so obviously I probably missed something or messed something up. It found 2 or three discrepancies. I hadn't added someone's sibling and a few dates were wrong. Plus, I had written names and places incorrectly. HOWEVER, If your going to use this tool, please remember to tell ChatGPT what exactly you need it to do, (eg. find a missing family member or spot the difference between Chamblee and Chamble.) Just keep that in mind.

[@calvinmitchell6381]

Consider this: I have been doing genealogy since the early 90s when I would go to the National Archives in DC and spend all day spinning through microfilm rolls till my eyes ached. I have spent decades putting together my father's side starting with two brothers in the late 1890s. When I couldn't get any further I started coming forward. Since then I have accumulated over 6,500 people along with copies of every document I could find on each one. My goal for all of that work was to pass it down to my son and grandkids hoping someone down the line would pick it up and work it further. Ai is in its primitive stage right now but in the decades to come it will instantly provide ALL of what took me thousands of hours to research. I am not anti Ai and it's definitely going to be here but our personal genealogy research will be obsolete.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

We started our genealogy journeys about the same time. I wouldn’t say our personal research will become obsolete. There are things that will only be gleaned through personal experience or family stories. Will our focus in genealogy research shift in the coming years and decades? Sure. But when it comes to family history, we will always need the input of members of the family.

[@calvinmitchell6381]

@@AmyJohnsonCrow I agree, family personal stories and details Ai would not be publicly available but the research information we use to build our tree such as census, certificates of death, birth, marriage, military etc. AI will sweep through that and do the same thing in a few minutes that took us a few decades to do. In that respect our young children and grand children will pay $29.95 and get all that.

[@LindaSchreiber]

Brilliant info! Thanks! I played a little, but not much. Seemed to be useful for things like social listory of an area in a time frame. But I never went far enough, clearly. I'm going back to do better ;) A useful tool is not something to waste!

[@markthompson7124]

I’ve had good success with social history as well, particular with things that have been written about many times by others. Just avoid steering towards specific details.

[@webrarian]

Have you tried asking it to write a "negative biography"? I tried asking it to write a negative review and it stripped out all the gushing stuff you mentioned.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

That sounds intriguing. I’ll have to give that a try.

[@phaeriestud]

Thank you for confirming what I had hoped is possible. Besides the genealogy tips, I appreciate the mini tutorial on ChatGPT, which helps me understand what it is and a better way to ask for help.

[@petehealy9819]

Very, very interesting and helpful! Thank you!

[@joyce7892]

Thank you so much Amy. I want to do this with my ancestors as children for my grandchildren. I didn't know where to begin so now I have an idea.

[@kevinthompson3906]

That’s a great idea to use it to generate a narrative based on a set of facts. Really handy for someone wanting to publish their research for their family

[@nancyruthless]

Excellent explanation. The majority of us have been engaging with AI/Machine Learning in different capacities through the products we use on a daily basis. ChatGPT was just the product that made it more accessible and triggered a mini AI revolution. I'm looking forward to a consumer-friendly chatbot that understands my personal genealogy data - my gedcoms, downloaded research files, and notes. Imagine asking it to find relatives who lived in DeKalb, NY between 1804 and 1860 and put those into a spreadsheet with birth and death dates where available, and it just spits that out, even if the data isn't properly added to a database somewhere. Maybe I scribbled it on a piece of paper and took a photo with my phone, but it still ends up on that spreadsheet. I want that. I do think worries about AI rendering all our blood, sweat, and tears from the last 40 years obsolete is probably unwarranted at this point. Unless ChatGPT (or its cousins) can negotiate with the Nebraska Historical Society on my behalf and persuade them to provide me access to some 1911 records from the Geneva reform school (presumably stashed away in a dusty basement filing cabinet) there's ample non-AI work left for us to undertake, including of course the gathering of family stories, as others have mentioned.

[@stevehamann9624]

i generated a family tree with JSON values with parent childs values chatgpt generated a text output works like a charm but there is a limit for the values so for small presentations it works fine

[@beblount]

If I have to provide the facts about a person, place or thing to ChatGPT I don't see the benefit of it as far as furthering my research. If I'm writing a book or article then I guess it would be helpful. To be honest I have no experience with it. I guess I'll try it one of these days. I did enjoy the video though. Wonderfully presented as always. Thanks

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Thanks for the kind words 😊 As for using ChatGPT, it's like any other tool -- you don't always have a need for it, but it's good to have when that need arises.

[@estranhokonsta]

Nice explanation and also nice practical uses of hose ai tool. Nice also the focus you have made in explaining what a language model is. It was pretty important and correct. I will just add some corrections. Comparing these large language models with chat bots is not completely wrong in a first approach just to get started. But it is really stretching it. And most of their essence is lost in that analogy. So one should give a quick follow up or at least leave a little warning. You made the excellent distinction between facts and what ChatGPT (and his cousins) gives. But there is a catch here. Those uncountable texts that they were trained with are full of data/facts embedded in them. And this means that they can indeed be used as a searching tool. One just has to realize that the legitimacy of those facts is very far from being credible and that the one who is giving them has a strong editorial power over them. Someone with a 2 year old kid's concept of what being factual is. If used like a search engine, another way to think of those language models, is as interacting with one of those experienced old geezer full of stories and full of "knowledge" about the world. One that worked as a storyteller before retiring. One who always thrived in telling stories. So. This means that he could be entertaining and even interesting. This means that he could even know some old forgotten things that happened who knows when. But in all of it, what is truth and what is story? probably even he doesn't really remember (or care that much). In fact when using google search and co, one should already have a very similar attitude. Who really knows how much credible the net is? maybe 0.001% of the facts in the internet can be believed (or some other statistic invented by me)? I mention this because when hearing some people declaiming some "real facts", it seem that some of those people forget where they got them from.

[@grainesutube]

THANKS. This is the best synopsis of ChatGPT that I have seen. I now think I can get some usefulness from it.

[@aaronag7876]

Excellent video and great advice about ChatGPT being a tool and you need to check the facts and date it gives it. Learning how to "Prompt" correctly and with the right commands is key. Just starting my own family trace, so this was a great help. Thanks. New Sub and bell set.

[@scottallen3921]

Excellent video. I love ChatGPT but people have to know its strengths and weaknesses. I used it to make lesson plans and it made excellent lesson plans, but I had to be specific. Such as, write me a 45 minute lesson plan for 6th grade students using Canadian standards for adding mixed fractions. I would then need to check it for its accuracy. I could cut and paste into my lesson plan and change what I needed. I used it to write some tests too but again needed to check for accuracyi would say that about 95% of the questions would be good but some would not include enough information or have wrong answers.

[@GenealogyTV]

Great video!

[@evfusion4094]

A great video with some excellent ideas. Thank you Amy.

[@hanksimon1023]

This was cool to use, with great results, but it did extrapolate and fabricate additional information beyond my initial facts... and it did so with great confidence. ;-). So it still has to be double checked.

[@outoftheforest7652]

as for the "editorializing" Chat GPT is horrible for that... You can, however, tell it to keep it's tone/style NEUTRAL and OBJECTIVE and to cut out all the "flowery" language.

[@Itsshegooo]

I’ve been trying to get more into my genealogy recently because one of my aunt did and brought a huge folder of lots of cool stuff over and used ancestry for a while . Now that I’m into I’ve found lots of stuff but when you mentioned the kingery’s I remembered finding them in my genealogy not sure if it’s any correlation but I’m related to a Samuel kingery jr (born:1 apr 1833-14 nov 1913) son of possibly Samuel sr and Catherine “Eve” Evelene and he married Catherine “Katie” kingery (maiden name was possibly Mullen) ❤

[@billgross3579]

Thank you for such good information about AI tools. I've started using AI for my own research (unrelated to genealogy) - and everything you discussed will help me immensely. Thanks again!

[@MrHEAVYi]

Thank you, this was great and easy to understand!

[@DebiBrady]

As a writer/creator, I have been skeptical of all the hooplala around ChatGPT and other AI apps that "promise" to deliver quality content. I have found using these tools (for many years now) has been useful in pointing me in a particular direction and, as in your example, provide lists. It seems to be best at doing that. I'm currently searching for an ex-hubby who I've been told has died, but have found no evidence of his passing. Asking for an obit resulted in his deceased wife (2010). Asking if he were still alive yielded no new information and specifically responded that it could not find evidence whether or not he is still among the living. Thanks for the video!

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

These can be good tools for things dealing with language, like how it gave me a workable first draft when I gave it the facts to work with. But for the research itself, no. Then again, that isn’t what it was designed to do.

[@jannicerasorhubbard6758]

Thank you for an excellent preview of using AI in our research. I have just started looking at it and I now have some excellent ideas of ways to use it.

[@vintages10]

Thank you for the video.

[@vaiciciaku]

Very useful, thank you!

[@donnacolyar2008]

I used it to translate a talk into Spanish and compared it to Google Translate! It did a great job!

[@gene4094]

Thank you for the information.

[@smiles_14]

Valuable video! Thanks!

[@snailrancher]

The technical term for an AI “making up facts” is “hallucination”; it certainly fits.

[@staynavytom2963]

New subscriber. Learned a lot about chatGPT from your video. I was wanting to use chatGPT as background research on the history of a place or event but not a person or ancestor. For example, I research the lives and times of members killed in WWII and write stories about where they grew up and the military engagement in which they lost their lives. Would chatGPT be a good and trustworthy source for that kind of information?

[@mossie125]

Amazing video!!

[@rwssinor]

Amy, thank you !

[@martinfranke6748]

this video gave me a better understanding of AI, and introduced me to 'Chat GPT' something I had never heard of.

[@bluzedogg]

You are truly outstanding!

[@wmgthilgen]

ChatGPT answer's, depend on the semanic's one utilizes when asking a question! Though the answer would be simular, there's a vast difference between one asking for the result's of "Defication collideing with a rotary oscilator" and "Shit hitting the fan".

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Crafting a good prompt is key to success!

[@sballantine8127]

Proper spelling is crucial, too, so it would be no wonder this example didn't/couldn't return an accurate result.

[@michaelmcgee8543]

Great!

[@sr2291]

PerplexityAI not only scans the Internet but gives you the links to the articles it finds.

[@Jack-xy4fy]

Perplexity Is far better, its more accurate than chat gpt.

[@sr2291]

@Jack-xy4fy Yes, it is. It gives the sources where it gets its information from. I found one of my ancestors' ship records with it. The ship record listed his wife's and children's names and ages, his age, his exact birthplace, and his parents names. Before that he was a brick wall.

[@sr2291]

I asked Perplexity AI Who was John Peter Kingery? John Peter Kingery John Peter Kingery (1841-1917) was an American man who lived in Ohio during the 19th century. According to the search results, he was the son of Henry Kingrey and Nancy Sienn, and was born on March 29, 1841 in Mason Township, Lawrence, Ohio. Kingery managed to avoid serving in the American Civil War until August 18, 1864, when he was eventually drafted. He was married to Elizabeth Jane Murnahan, and they had children together. Kingery passed away on December 13, 1917 at the age of 76. Additional details about his life and family can be found in the genealogical records provided in the search results.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Looks like it has scraped either the FamilySearch family tree or another online tree that has FamilySearch's index of Ohio death records attached. Nancy "Sienn" is how FamilySearch indexed the mother's name on John's death certificate. I haven't seen any sources that have him born specifically in Mason Township. Looks like it has conflated his place of birth with his place of death. So... it's close, but not quite :-)

[@sr2291]

@@AmyJohnsonCrow It scans the internet. It is up to you to check for accuracy. Have you looked for his birth in the records on FamilySearch?

[@NikkiTheViolist]

I don't trust ChatGPT to get facts correct, but using it to create a first draft of either a table or a bunch of paragraphs after inputting facts is a pretty interesting idea.

[@josueetcom]

Great demo! As someone who works in tech generative AI has become over-hyped in my opinion. I'm surprised by how some people treat its output as fact. It's just making educated guesses based on what it's been trained on but can still spew misinformation. I've tried to make complex calculations with ChatGPT but even after pointing out its errors it still sometimes struggles to get things right. But it's great for exploring ideas and topics, summarizing or extracting from a piece of text, and generating drafts!

[@jlvandat69]

I will need to watch again.....didn't hear specific instructions for doing genealogy research.

[@CCoburn3]

AI has a huge problem -- it doesn't know how to say, "I don't know." Also, AI doesn't UNDERSTAND anything. ChatGPT essentially just guesses what the next word will be. And that means it is good at spewing plausible-sounding garbage. It SOUNDS right. But if you trust anything that chatGPT says, you've got a problem. That's not to say that chatGPT is ALWAYS wrong. It means that you cannot depend on anything it says without triple-checking it. And in genealogy, you often cannot check at all. After all, if you can't find the records in the first place, chances are, you can't find the records to check what chatGPT has told you.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

That’s exactly my point. ChatGPT isn’t doing research, so prompting it to “write a biography of John Smith” isn’t going to give you anything accurate. But if you tell it the facts to include, it can give you something much more realistic. It’s all in how you approach using it and how you prompt it.

[@bunnycatch3r]

What "horror stories"?

[@donnymiddlebrook]

I haven’t heard of any horror story with disastrous results. Can you point out some of these disastrous results?

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

As I mentioned in the video, there was the lawyer who used ChatGPT to write a brief and it had citations to cases that didn’t exist. The last I heard, he was facing disciplinary action.

[@ward26102]

Family Search's AI is not very strong on the "I" part. It needs improvement

[@chimpspecialist]

I think data driven individuals would be drawn to the chart first.

[@ASMRPeople]

Perhap genealogy will be the last battle ground ai vs human. AI will be the best at trolling through records & making connections. Humans in genealogy form an AI so to speak network working as one unit. The unconventional irradic network vs the machine like efficiency network. Good v Evil?

[@Susan.Lewis.]

Chat GPT has changed significantly since you posted this video.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

That’s always the challenge of doing a video like this!

[@ropulse1]

Well you did a better job of getting results than I did in kzbin.info/www/bejne/hnzZiWyGitibiq8 - I think I will give it another shot, but I am thinking about using the Google AI , and associations (FAN Research), I am hearing good things about it - do you plan a video on it and the differences between the different AI products? I would be interested in your more polished and thoughtful approach. Keep up the good work.

[@omarnaser8291]

are you doctor

[@AlbertSantisteve-Davies]

can you take a dna test to find out they are 20th cousins

[@LysanderLH]

ChatGPT said Shirley Bassey was born in India!

[@terryl.cooper]

"Shirley Bassey was born in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, on January 8, 1937. She is a renowned Welsh singer best known for her powerful voice and for recording the theme songs for several James Bond films." That was the response I got just now.

[@LysanderLH]

@@terryl.cooper the incorrect information ChatGPT gave me was within the context of a completely unrelated question about famous singers born in India pre 1947.

[@robertragan-fq6ij]

A most excellent job, Amy. Salute! 💛🐭🪕

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

Thanks 😊

[@Greywolfgrafix]

I don't see Chromosome Painter or ChatGPT anywhere. Where's it located? It is NOT anywhere on Ancestry that I have seen.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

ChatGPT isn’t part of Ancestry. It’s a completely separate website. AncestryDNA does have a chromosome painter; look in the ethnicity section.

[@michaelmcgee8543]

It might be a tumor.

[@DemocratsForFreedom]

Tried everything you mentioned, and all I got was absolute nonsense repeating the facts I put in while adding some complete nonsense. Sorry

[@gshenaut]

Google isn't the only and arguably not even the best Internet search engine. Just sayin'.

[@stefan_gordik]

depends on what you define as "best", but yes it is, for the average user, who doesnt give a shit and just want a quick and reliable search.

[@gshenaut]

@@stefan_gordik My point was that it is not really the best idea to use "google" as a verb as in the video.

[@AmyJohnsonCrow]

“Google” as a verb has become like “Kleenex” is to disposable tissues. 😊

[@carlthornton3076]

Very Good!... #4 ✝ {6-27-2023}