AI Transcription Program Tested at Ancestry

Diane Henriks, who writes a blog on her website “Know Who Wears the Genes in Your Family,” was able to access a new feature now only in beta testing at Ancestry: Their Image Transcript Tool, which can transcribe handwritten documents and letters. 

I came across her most recent post while perusing genealogy groups on Facebook, and I was intrigued.

Apparently AI has been trained to take on this tedious task, and Henriks said she found it to do a fairly good job. Of course, there goes my big plan to make a living by offering a cursive-transcription service to all those young-uns under 25 who never learned to write, let alone read, cursive.

That said, however, there is part of me that is kind of hoping Ancestry can successfully make this tool as useful and accurate as possible. I have run across reams of hand-written documents in one of the research projects I’ve been working on for several years, and this tool would finally get me to where I should have been by now. Because, well, if the subject matter is a lot of legal jargon, as it is with this project, it's really hard to get excited at the prospect of trying to decipher it all. For me, anyway.

The document I have with this post is one I found at the University of Kentucky archives regarding the Francis Giltner family of Carroll County, Kentucky. This one was a fairly easy read, but wills, indentures and other handwritten documents often are not.

Be it jargon-filled, or just not written with a steady hand, the task can be daunting, so while I have transcribed a two-part diary from 1852 for a friend, and about three dozen letters written by my great-grandfather during the Civil War, I have only transcribed pages for this project in dribs and drabs. I am certain that, somewhere, in those lines and lines, and pages and pages, is something I need that is just waiting to be found. 

So, with progress, there is always good and bad. I may not be able to start a lucrative handwriting transcription service, but let’s be honest. Was I really ever going to do it? I think we know the answer.

You can read Diane's blog post here. I’ll keep you all posted on when the new tool is released for all Ancestry subscribers.