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MyHeritage becomes the first family history company to use conversational AI for genealogy
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.
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 it is ‘the only service to offer such groundbreaking features for family history, and the first to leverage conversational AI for searching historical records’.
The two new features are integrated, allowing MyHeritage users to generate an AI Biograph for ancestors they find using AI Record Finder. AI Biographies may also be generated directly for individuals in family trees on MyHeritage.
How does AI Record Finder work?
Until now, searching for historical records has been similar to using a search engine such as Google, i.e. entering a search term and then assessing the results. Instead, AI Record Finder allows users to converse with an AI assistant in a chat to quickly find records about their ancestors, relatives, or other deceased individuals. Users can still use the traditional search engine on MyHeritage, but AI Record Finder adds an additional chat mode that increases the chances they may be able to find elusive records they have never found before, thanks to the power of AI.
AI Record Finder processes the information the user enters, and understands what additional details are necessary to help narrow down the search results. It then guides the user by asking the relevant questions according to the context and information provided by the user, to find the most relevant records about the person the user is searching for. Once located, the records can be reviewed and the details saved to the user’s family tree.
Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage, said of the new features: ‘We’re constantly pushing the boundaries of genealogy to reinv
