I have been experimenting for over a year now with Artificial Intelligence tools to determine how I can best use them for my genealogy research and family history work. After 36 years of research, and blogging about genealogy since April 2006 on Genea-Musings, I have a wealth of material to work with. It is all imperfect!
A) The Ancestor Biography Creation Goal
My present life goal is to create eBooks for my relatives and descendants, and anyone else interested, about my own ancestry and my wife's ancestry. I have lots of genealogy records about all of my ancestors back many generations, but very few family stories about my close family, plus any I have found from books, periodicals, blog posts, etc. while doing research. How best can I do this with consistency and better wordsmithing than I can create myself?
I also want to create audio and video files about my own life for my descendants, and try to tell my story in my own voice.
Here is my current process to create consistent ancestor and relative biographies that may interest my relatives and descendants.
B) Using Artificial Intelligence to Create An Ancestral Biography
1) Ancestor/Relative Research Notes: Using the RootsMagic family tree program, I create ancestor and relative research notes in Person Notes with references to sources for most of the events in each ancestor or relative profile. The Person Notes are essentially chronological and often include a summary of each record found to document the life of the person.
2) Ancestor/Relative Genealogical Sketches: Using the RootsMagic Person Notes, and some of the record images, I write a blog post on Genea-Musings for each ancestor or relative. A compendium of the blog posts can be found on the 52 Ancestors/Relatives Biographies page on Genea-Musings. I create a PDF document of the ancestor/relative genealogical sketch.
3) Ancestor/Relative Biography: I attach the PDF document of the genealogical sketch to the free Claude (usually 3.7 Sonnet) AI tool to write the biography, using the prompt: "You are an expert genealogist. Please create a draft biography from the attached file, including parents, siblings, spouses and children (with birth and death dates and places), summarize life events, and add historical facts as appropriate, but do not add or embellish any extra genealogical details. Use section headings. Expand the information in each section to add more details. The tone should be casual and suitable for family members."
I usually have to request Claude AI to expand each paragraph for more information. The result of this is copied to a word processing file and saved in my computer "AI Biographies" file folder for the person.
4) Ancestor/Relative Poem and Song Lyrics: I use one or more of the free ChatGPT4, Claude, Grok, Gemini and Perplexity AI tools to write a poem and song lyrics based on the uploaded genealogical sketch PDF. My prompt is usually "Please create a poem and song lyrics to commemorate [this person's] life." I copy the poems and song lyrics in a word processing document and save it in my computer file folder for "AI Poems and Songs." for the person. I choose one poem and one song lyrics to use in a blog post. The song lyrics are used to create a 3-4 minute song on www.Suno.com for the subject person, which I save in an "AI Songs" computer file folder. The poems and songs could be collected into an audio book or video for a family library, a YouTube channel, or even bedtime stories. <G>
5) Ancestor/Relative Briefing Document and Podcast: I use the free Google NotebookLM to upload the Ancestor/Relative genealogical sketch PDF in order to create a Briefing Document, a Timeline with a cast of characters, answers to assorted chat questions, and an Audio Overview (a podcast in an 8 to 20 minutes WAV file - I can create only three Audio Interviews each day). I save the Audio Overview in an "AI Podcasts" computer file folder.
6) Ancestor/Relative Podcast Transcription: I use the Audio Overview WAV files from NotebookLM to create a text transcription of the Audio Overview podcast using TurboScribe.com (I can do three transcriptions each day for free). I save each podcast transcription in a word processing file and save it in the "AI Audio to Text" computer file folder for the person. The podcast could be used in an ancestor biographical video along with family photographs or genealogy record images.
7) Ancestor Family Images: I will often use a prompt with ChatGPT4, Gemini, Grok, or CoPilot to create a photorealistic image that fits one period or situation of a family's life story. I save the images in an "AI Images" file for each AI Tool. I use these images to illustrate my blog posts and they can be useful for biographies.
C) What I've Done to Date:
1) I have completed all of the above for my two parents, my four grandparents, my 8 great-grandparents, and my 16 2nd great-grandparents. I'm currently doing the tasks for my 32 3rd great-grandparents one week at a time. I want to do the same tasks for my wife's ancestral families back through her 2nd great-grandparents.
2) I have collected all of the Claude AI biographies for my ancestors through the 2nd great-grandparents into one word processing document. I need to edit them and standardize them, and then add some photographs of the ancestors. In the short-term, I will save this document as a PDF in an ebook format and send it to my descendants and relatives as soon as I can so that the work is not lost completely when I pass away. I will do the same for my wife's ancestors also through the 2nd great-grandparents.
3) I can usually perform all of the AI tasks after creating the PDF of the ancestor genealogical sketch in about 30 minutes. Creating and listening to the song, and waiting for the Audio Overview to complete, take the longest time.
D) A Rough Mind Map:
I asked the GenSpark AI Tool to create a mind map of the Ancestor Biography Creation (ABC) Process outlined above, and the above chart is the first pass. I asked it to attach lines from one module to another and it did not do well in a second pass.In the chart above, each module has identified a task and an output to create an Ancestor Biography. I need to tell GenSpark, or another AI tool that does mind maps, that I want a line from #1 to #2; a line from #2 to #3; a line from #3 to #4, #5, and #7; a line from #5 to #6; and lines from #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7 to the Ancestral Biography Creation box in the middle.
E) The Future?
Dedicated Genea-Musings readers will recognize the elements in this Ancestor Biography Creation (ABC) Process as what I roughly outlined in words in my blog post on 1 April 2025 titled "Announcing YOUR GENEA-GENIE." See, there was method to my madness!!
I foresee a dedicated Ancestor Biography Creation (ABC) AI Agent tool that can do this ancestor biography creation in one prompt, along with the PDF (or other) input to provide the information for the ancestor. The researcher will have to do the research work, but this process should turn out a decent set of outputs that can be used or modified to the user's wishes.
Unfortunately, I am not that good of a programmer or promptmeister to create this type of AI Agent tool. I would be happy to work with someone on it, though!
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Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver
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