Take a look at FamilySearch Labs

 

https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/

The current experiments in FamilySearch Labs include:

• Merge Analysis View: Understand the nuances of a merge from a tree person’s change log.
• Expand your search with Full Text: Unlock hidden discoveries in historical records that have never been searchable until now.
• Family Group Trees: Gather your family into a group, and see the same living tree. Enrich your history with photos, stories, and sources.
• Find Help with AI Search: Explore how an AI-assisted search might provide better guidance and help for doing research and using the FamilySearch website.
• Profile Quality Score: Display a quality estimate for a profile in the Family Tree. Only available on certain profiles.

Each of these options has detailed instructions. I have written about some of these experiments in the past but they continue to evolve. 

Collaboration between MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA

 Quoting from an email announcement of July 18, 2024. 

This collaboration, which includes integration between the MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA websites, enables FamilyTreeDNA customers to transfer their family trees to MyHeritage, and to continue building them on MyHeritage. FamilyTreeDNA users can now easily transfer their family trees to MyHeritage for free, after providing consent on both FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage.

This collaboration is an extension the longstanding partnership between the two companies. Quoting further from the announcement:

This strategic decision allows FamilyTreeDNA to focus on its expertise in DNA testing services and reporting, while providing its users with access to the powerful family tree tools and technologies offered by MyHeritage.

To facilitate this collaboration, MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA have developed a technical integration that now enables FamilyTreeDNA users to seamlessly transfer their family tree data to MyHeritage. This process is voluntary; however, transferring the tree data to MyHeritage is encouraged, as FamilyTreeDNA will officially sunset their family tree builder on September 9, 2024. At that point, all family trees on FamilyTreeDNA will become read-only. It will still be possible to transfer trees from FamilyTreeDNA to MyHeritage after this date, but this functionality may not be available forever, so the sooner the transfer is done, the better. Access to DNA results on FamilyTreeDNA will remain unchanged. 

This agreement will apparently affect FamilyTreeDNA users with family trees on the FamilyTreeDNA website much more that those with family trees on MyHeritage.  

Some Random Comments on AI

 

The attention paid to artificial intelligence the past year or so has engendered a massive amount of jargon. Here are a few terms to get you started. Oh, I decided to add a few of my own comments to the definitions. If you want a very complete glossary of AI, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_artificial_intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computer systems capable of performing complex tasks that historically only a human could do, such as reasoning, making decisions, or solving problems. (my comments are in italics) AI is an oxymoron, it is neither artificial nor intelligent. It was an inappropriate term from the beginning and is only getting worse from overuse. It is primarily an advanced search engine with a natural language interface. 

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): A type of artificial intelligence (AI) that matches or surpasses human capabilities across a wide range of cognitive tasks. This is in contrast to narrow AI, which is designed for specific tasks. AGI is considered one of various definitions of strong AI. No one, as yet, has developed anything approaching AGI notwithstanding the claims. According to Ray Kurzweill, AI development will reach the point at which machine's intelligence and humans would merge and technological growth becomes uncontrollable. Kurzweill calls this the "Sigularity" See eBay. “The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil... 9780143037880.” Accessed July 12, 2024. https://www.ebay.com/itm/404858685406. There is also a newer book eBay. “The Singularity Is Nearer : When We Merge with AI by Ray Kurzweil (2024,... 9780399562761.” Accessed July 12, 2024. https://www.ebay.com/itm/204877512096.

Chatbot: At the most basic level, a chatbot is a computer program that simulates and processes human conversation (either written or spoken), allowing humans to interact with digital devices as if they were communicating with a real person. Considering the fact that I have to communicate with the AI programs using this conversational tool, I guess I need to figure out the most efficient way to talk to them (it, whatever)

Prompts: AI prompting refers to the process of interacting with an artificial intelligence (AI) system by providing specific instructions or queries to achieve a desired outcome. It has become important to design the prompts in advance so that you don't spend a lot of time trying get a usable response. 

Ch

Going on two years now, I have been working with AI image generators and chatbots. I appreciate the additional features of the chatbots but there is only one, so far, that provides any source information that makes what they produce useful. I wrote about some of my impressions back in March. See https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2024/03/google-search-or-ai-chatbot-that-is.html

Here are some additional examples using the same prompt with each chatbot. 

Prompt:Tell me about the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center and include which records were lost and which were saved. This is a standard type of question I would be asking in putting together a presentation on military records. Here is the main source for the information: National Archives. “The 1973 Fire, National Personnel Records Center,” August 15, 2016. https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973. 

I might have pointed out previously that when I test a search engine or now, a chatbot, I ask questions about things I already know. That gives me an idea of the depth of the response. I had to take screenshots of the responses because they were going to make this post way too long. You can click on the image to see the text. 

Google Gemini: 

At the end of this fairly good explanation Gemini said I could find more information from archive.gov which is correct but not very useful. The fatal flaw is that I would need to go do the research myself and see if what Gemini said is correct. I suspect this will be the response from most chatbots. 

ChatGPT 4o 

About the same information but not sources even the link to the National Archives. When I asked it where it got the information, it said from NARA or National Archives and Records. Once again, I am back doing my own research. 

Claude

Because I know the specific source of the information, I am puzzled why the chatbots can't just tell me where what they said came from. I suspect that the information they give me is from theri Large Language Model training and they really have no idea how to find the source of the information. 

Microsoft Copilot

Now, this says about the same thing as the others, but there are footnotes and links to the National Archives document about the fire. Following the links takes you directly to a source. You can tell if the information given is consistent and accurate. Here is the link I used to create this prompt. The 1973 Fire, National Personnel Records Center | National Archives

Here I am working in genealogy. I am spending time on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree where I find entries with sources and entries without sources. Presently, I find no use for a response either on the Family Tree or from a chatbot that doesn't give me sources. You can make up your own mind but I happen to like accuracy. 

Videos vs. Blog Posts

 

https://youtu.be/YRYn7wyo7OA?si=kyHm8Xe-6bEps7Ds Using the FamilySearch Full Text Search Feature-A Genealogical Goldmine

During the past month, I have researched and produced about 11 presentations, eight, of which, are now on the BYU Library Family History Center YouTube Channel, Being involved with this level of in-person presentations takes some significant time. Of course living takes some time also. We have had significant family events and some medical involvement, so writing blog posts has been put on hold for a few weeks. Notwithstanding, the amount of time spent on other issues, I have not forgotten the blog. 

Now, if you really want to know what is going on, I suggest looking at the stream of videos we are collectively producing each week from the BYU Library Family History Center. Oh, by the way, we have a new website, although the old one is still online. See https://familyhistory.lib.byu.edu/ There is also a set of all the nearly 1000 videos on the BYU Library website. We also do live online classes every week. See https://familyhistory.lib.byu.edu/learning/virtual-classes We also have a webinar scheduled during the week. See https://familyhistory.lib.byu.edu/learning/webinars 

There is a lot more going on than just presentations and classes. But to see what I am working on, you can see the videos as a good sample of other activities. 

OldNews.com Grows by 11.6 Million Nordic Newspapers

OldNews.com

This isn't exactly new news but it is an indication of the way the OldNews.com website is likely to grow. If you haven't looked at the OldNews.com website, you should. Quoting from the announcement back in May:

The new content includes historical local, regional and national newspapers, periodicals and gazettes from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, with articles dating back to 1666, but mostly from the 19th century.

They are incredibly useful for anyone researching Nordic roots: we’ve gathered them from various sources into one place, making it easier than ever to search through them.

Here is a link to a video explaining the content and function of the OldNews.com website. 

https://youtu.be/StUOcj-tWHo?si=CFygzqRKFZc69nI-

I tried a search for a local Eastern Arizona newspaper and immediately found 188 results for one of my ancestors. Here is an example of one article. 

I am sure that the collection will focus on European newspapers from the list of countries in the place search but a general search for pages from the U.S. came up with almost 115 million pages. This is a paywall program but some of the content is also available on the MyHeritage.com website. 

Finally a way to quickly identify and correct entries on the FamilySearch Family Family Tree -- Family Tree Validator

 

https://findmyroots.tech/products/

I learned about this app at RootsTech 2024, a couple of months ago. I am sorry I have not written about it sooner but after talking to the developer, I was waiting for some changes before I went online with a post. 

The  Family Tree Validator, is a free Chrome extension by Robert Scott at Find My Roots Consulting. You can find this app by searching in the Chrome Web Store. 

This app does exactly what it says it does. It validates entries in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and gives you way of directly correcting the issues identified. I have been suggesting both types of features to FamilySearch for many years. There is a series of slides on the Validator site that explain the extension. Here is a quote from the extension website about the Validator.

Ensure that the information in your family's tree on FamilySearch is correct and complete. Validator makes it quick and easy. 

The purpose of the Family Tree Validator is to find inconsistencies, errors, missing data in your family's tree. Because these errors are under the surface, you may not even be aware that anything is wrong. It will make suggestions on items that may help FamilySearch find additional matches. It can even find cleanup items like date and location inconsistencies. Best of all, it makes fixing these simple issues very easy! Validator checks that the information currently in FamilySearch about your family is 'reasonable'. That means common sense tests are applied EVERYWHERE. It checks all the information currently available, comparing husband and wife, children, parents and siblings. The extension further checks each attached source record that the information was fully added into FamilySearch. This saves you massive time in doing this review yourself!

The Validator extension works when you are looking at a particular profile page in the FamilySearch Family Tree. You can see an example from one of my family lines above. The advantage is that changes can be made directly from the app such as standardization without an extra step. Because it is a browser app, it is always available for use. Go to the website for complete instructions. 

The Fix Everything feature allows you to make all the suggested changes at once. This is an advanced feature and should be used sparingly. It is important to review and evaluate every possible change. No system can account for every possible place or other data. Care and accuracy should always be a main concern. 

https://findmyroots.tech/getting-started/

If you are living under the entirely mistaken impression that your part of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is perfect, I suggest installing this free app and testing in on a few of the entries you think are correct in every way. With the newly added corrections, this app is invaluable in making your entries closer to correct as it is currently possible. However, if it suggests a “correction” and you happen to disagree with the suggested change, you can always ignore the suggestion, but I would take it a bit further and do some additional research to see if the suggested change is accurate. You might end up learning a little history in this process. 

In my example above, all of the changes suggested were standardization issues. This is an entire separate topic. The Validator does point out that few of the places mentioned in Other Information section of the profile were or are standardized. This brings up another interesting issue of whether the places in Other Information need to be standardized. I am sure the Validator will bring up a lot of questions. I suggest being brave and install it and see if you can out guess it. 

Photo Scanner Introduced on MyHeritage App

New: Multi-Photo Scanner on the MyHeritage Mobile App

 

https://youtu.be/Hp09Kf8w-04?si=NvFpX6EVkhnbx1Td

MyHeritage.com recently added a powerful, state-of-the-art Photo Scanner to the MyHeritage mobile app! Watch the video linked above for a quick overview of the new Photo Scanner.

Quoting from the blog post:

Photo Scanner is a state-of-the-art feature developed by MyHeritage’s AI team. It enables quick and easy scanning of entire album pages or multiple loose photos in a single tap. The scanner then uses cutting-edge, cloud-based AI technology to automatically detect the individual photos and crop them, saving hours of work traditionally required with other scanners. Scanned photos are saved in a dedicated album on your MyHeritage family site.

This is a dramatic addition to the MyHeritage collection of photo enhancement and acquisition tools.