Ancestry Website ‘MyHeritage’ has announced the release of two new AI features which it promises will ‘revolutionise genealogy’ in the same way Chat GPT revolutionised searching the internet.
AI Record Finder™ is an interactive, intelligent, free-text chat to help family historians locate relevant historical records about a person of interest in MyHeritage’s database of 20 billion records. It effectively removes the hardwork of research and “finds” your ancestors from available records.
The second new feature, AI Biographer™, automatically compiles a narrative about an ancestor’s life using information from historical records that match the person, creating a Wikipedia-like biography. MyHeritage has announced that is ‘the only service to offer such groundbreaking features for family history, and the first to leverage conversational AI for searching historical records’.
Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about this. Part of the motivation and excitement about ancestry and finding out more about relatives, is the feeling of making connections through your own diligence and the feeling afterwards of accomplishment. Family trees at the push of a button?
There’s no doubt about it, whether it’s an Alexa device in your home, a ring doorbell which pushes video to your phone, or computer generated images to help illustrate articles, AI is reaching into many aspects of life and perhaps, just perhaps….theres no escaping it.
