First step in AI for transcribing old documents

 

The new Scribe AI from My Heritage - first look

I have been resisting  using AI tools for genealogy (and everything else) but talk about them is everywhere. I have been warned about their "hallucinations" and so on.

My palaeographic skills are fair but not expert back to Tudor times. 

I have tried Transkribus a couple of times without much success, getting quite mangled results on documents which were in English although not with a particularly good hand.

I received an email about the new feature at My Heritage a couple of days ago which describes itself as "a powerful new feature that transcribes, translates, and interprets historical documents and photos" , so it seemed worth giving it a go.  It has a drag and drop interface to upload a file which is easy.

I uploaded the will of Roger Allis of Glentworth, Lincolnshire (Lincolnshire archives ref. Stow wills 1563/47). It is a single page in an untidy secretary hand which I had previously transcribed with a handful of words missing that I couldn't interpret. Maybe not a fair test but I was interested to see what would happen, and I was pleasantly surprised.

 ScribeAI gave a summary of the document telling me it was in secretary hand and what a husbandman was, and discussed some of the items bequeathed. It also noted that the date (which was in January 1562) was in old style dating and corrected it to give the modern year.

It also gave a summary of the people mentioned in the will and their relationship to Roger and the bequests made.

Then the actual transcription. The first part of Glentworth was missing due to the edge of the page being torn, so it transcribed this as Panton (another parish in Lincolnshire) which was probaly fair given the writing. The problem was that later when the word Glentworth was complete it still carried on with Panton and did not correct itself. It did insert some words that weren't there and had some trouble with money, e.g ij s (2 shillings) was given as 2 sheep.

It did fill in some of my gaps which was excellent, but got one name wrong, and corrected one of my transcriptions.

Overall it was impressive. I would say that it could be of great use but used as a guide and not to take the given transcription as gospel. I gave it a pretty difficult document and it gave back a pretty good result.