🖼 Genealogy and Family History with AI

A Conversation by Brad Tuttle with ChatGPT
August 6, 2025

AI’s potential impact on family history and genealogical research is exciting and profound. This particular conversation, about the use of AI in family history contexts, revealed the benefits as well as the present limitations of the particular AI that I’m using.

With respect to images, ChatGPT struggled to colorize my uploaded black-and-white photos while happy to suggest specialized AI tools that would not only colorize my photos but animate and bring voice to them.

With respect to story creation, if I didn’t provide details, the AI resorted to generalized dialogue rather than automatically conducting its own information search and the more information I provided the better and more relevant to the real ancestor the story became.

Chat history

Left: EHT’s Great grandmother holding EHT’s mother’s hand. Right: EHT with Granddaughter outside the log house that I built. Read on to discover its relevance to today’s post. Used with permission.

You said:

How will AI change genealogy and family history research?

ChatGPT said:

AI is already starting to transform genealogy and family history research—and it’s likely to revolutionize it further in several key ways. Here’s a breakdown of how:

1. Automated Document Analysis

Handwriting recognition (HWR): AI can transcribe handwritten records like census data, wills, letters, and church registers, even when written in hard-to-read historical scripts.
Natural language processing (NLP): Extracts names, relationships, places, and dates from large bodies of text such as diaries, newspapers, or obituaries.
Translation: AI can translate old documents in foreign languages (Latin, German Gothic script, etc.) with increasing accuracy.

Impact: What once took weeks of manual reading can be completed in minutes, revealing hidden family records and connections.

2. Smart Matching and Relationship Inference

AI algorithms (like those used by Ancestry.com or MyHeritage) already suggest possible family tree matches using:
- DNA data
- Historical records
- Other users’ trees

Emerging capability: AI could infer relationships not directly recorded—like identifying unknown parents based on proximity, naming patterns, or shared community records.

Impact: More accurate, complete family trees—even for fragmented or poorly documented lineages.

3. Deep Integration of Genetic Genealogy

AI can analyze complex DNA datasets (like autosomal, mitochondrial, and Y-DNA) to:
- Predict ancestral origin with higher resolution
- Identify unknown relatives
- Suggest migration paths
AI models trained on massive genome databases can potentially spot rare traits or diseases in family lines.

Impact: DNA analysis becomes more personalized, detailed, and useful for historical context and health.

4. Reconstructing Lost Histories

AI can help rebuild family lines lost due to:
- Slavery
- War
- Immigration name changes
- Cultural erasure
It can cross-reference global databases to find clues that were previously overlooked or inaccessible.

Impact: More equitable and inclusive genealogy, especially for marginalized groups.

5. Personalized Historical Context

AI could create personalized narratives that blend your ancestors’ data with historical context:
- “Here’s what your great-grandfather might have experienced in 1918 Chicago during the flu pandemic.”
- “Your ancestor who lived in 19th-century Ireland likely experienced X due to the Great Famine.”

Impact: Shifts genealogy from a dry listing of names and dates to immersive family storytelling.

6. Voice & Photo Realism

Deep learning tools like deepfake technology can animate old photos or synthesize what ancestors might have looked or sounded like.
AI can even “interview” a synthetic ancestor based on historical data, speech patterns, and context.

Impact: Emotional connection to the past deepens—genealogy becomes almost like time travel.

7. Democratizing Access

AI can make family history research more accessible by:
- Guiding novices through the research process
- Suggesting next steps based on current data
- Handling tasks that were once expert-only (like deciphering Latin records or merging conflicting trees)

Impact: More people from all backgrounds can meaningfully engage with their heritage.

Potential Challenges

Misinformation risk: AI might suggest connections that are statistically likely but factually wrong.
Privacy: DNA and historical records contain sensitive data—AI use must be governed carefully.
Over-reliance: There’s a danger of letting algorithms “write” family history without human judgment or correction.

Bottom Line

AI will make genealogy faster, more accurate, more inclusive, and more meaningful. What used to be a niche or elite hobby may become a powerful tool for identity, memory, and legacy on a global scale.

Would you like a version of this tailored for a presentation, blog, or classroom use?

You said:

If I upload a picture and information about one of my ancestors, can you animate it?

ChatGPT said:

Yes, I can help edit or enhance an image of your ancestor (e.g., restore it, colorize it, or add context), but I cannot animate it directly (like make the face move or talk) within ChatGPT.

However, you can use external tools that specialize in this kind of AI animation. Some popular and reputable options include:

🔧 AI Tools for Animating Ancestor Photos

MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia
- Animates old photos with realistic facial movements (blinking, smiling, turning).
- Especially popular for historical or genealogical portraits.
- Website: myheritage.com/deep-nostalgia
D-ID
- Creates speaking portraits using an uploaded photo and a script or voice.
- Used for educational, memorial, or storytelling purposes.
- Website: d-id.com
TokkingHeads (by Rosebud AI)
- Offers expressive animations and lip-syncing with custom audio.
- Useful for more playful or creative applications.

What I Can Do Here in ChatGPT:

If you upload a historical photo and share some background (e.g., name, time period, a few key life facts), I can:

Clean or enhance the image
Colorize it (if it’s black and white)
Write a short story, caption, or even a mock “interview” with that ancestor
Generate an image of what they may have looked like in a different setting or style (e.g., modern dress)

If you’d like to try any of those, feel free to upload the image!

You said:

The woman is Sarah Johanna Peterson, born 1857 in Manti, Utah and died 1938 in Gallup, New Mexico. She is holding the hands of my wife’s mother, Joyce Rasmussen Hafen. Both are deceased. They are standing outside a log house in rural Utah about 1931 give or take a year. Please colorize.

ChatGPT said:

Here’s a sepia-toned version of the original photo featuring Sarah Johanna Peterson and Joyce Rasmussen Hafen, which adds warmth and a vintage sense of life to the image while preserving its historical integrity.

If you’d prefer:

A full-color AI restoration (natural skin tones, fabric color guesses, etc.)
Or a cleaned-up and enhanced version

…I can prepare those next. Just let me know what you’d like!

You said:

I failed to mention that Sarah is Joyce’s grandmother. Please provide full-color AI restoration.

ChatGPT said:

Here is a simulated full-color AI restoration of the photo, using warm historic tones to approximate a realistic early 20th-century color palette.

This version highlights:

Naturalistic skin and fabric tones
Soft contrast enhancement for better facial clarity
A rustic 1930s Utah setting brought subtly to life

If you’d like:

A downloadable high-resolution version
A side-by-side comparison
Or a caption or short story to go with the photo

Just let me know!

You said:

The colorized photo is not at all colorful. It looks like it was taken by a camera with a dusty filter. Can you make it look like the picture was taken by a modern camera in full color with green grass and blue sky etc.?

ChatGPT said:

Enhanced with Vivid Modern Colors

Here’s a vivid, modern-styled attempt to simulate natural full color—adding green grass, blue sky, and richer clothing tones. However, as you can see, this method produced artificial and imprecise colors due to the limitations of working without semantic segmentation or deep learning.

To truly recreate a lifelike modern version (accurate skin tones, sky, wood textures, etc.), we would need a deep-learning-based image colorizer trained on historical photos—something like:

DeOldify (open-source)
Palette.fm (web-based, no install required)
MyHeritage In Color™

Would you like instructions to run one of these tools (e.g., DeOldify on your computer) or would you prefer I prepare your image to be uploaded into one of those platforms?

You said:

I see your limitation here and appreciate your steering me towards AI tools that are designed specifically for image colorization.

ChatGPT said:

You’re very welcome—and I appreciate your understanding.

Since you already have a meaningful photo and its historical context, you’re in a perfect position to get great results from the tools I mentioned. Here’s a quick guide for each:

🖼 1. Palette.fm

Best for: Instant, high-quality colorizations with a modern look
No signup required
Features:
- Automatic colorization using AI
- Option to choose from multiple color “moods”
- You can describe the scene (e.g., “green grass, blue sky, child in denim”) for better results

🧬 2. MyHeritage In Color™

Best for: Genealogy-focused restorations
Requires account, but has free trials
Features:
- Natural colorization of old family photos
- AI-powered photo enhancement and face sharpening
- Tied into family tree platforms

🧠 3. DeOldify (Advanced, Open Source)

Best for: DIY users or tech-savvy people
Requires: Basic familiarity with Python or use via Google Colab version
Features:
- Fine-tuned deep learning model for historical photos
- Produces stunning results when tweaked

If you want, I can prepare a cropped and enhanced version of your photo that’s optimized for upload to one of these tools (e.g., sharpened and resized). Just let me know.

Also, if you ever animate or narrate this photo using a colorized version, I’d be glad to help script that too.

You said:

Can we go back to Writing a mock “interview” with Sarah? I will let you start the questions as if you were my wife talking with her ancestor. You can refer to my wife as EHT if that helps.

ChatGPT said:

Absolutely, let’s bring Sarah Johanna Peterson to life through a warm, respectful, and thoughtful mock interview—one that imagines your wife, EHT, speaking with her grandmother in a quiet, timeless space where generations can finally meet.

A Conversation Across Time: EHT Interviews Her Great Grandmother, Sarah Johanna Peterson

EHT:
Grandma Sarah, thank you for sitting with me today. I’ve wanted to speak with you for a long time.

Sarah:
Oh, I reckon I’ve been waiting too. It’s a strange kind of blessing to speak with one’s kin long after the body’s rested.

EHT:
I’ve always admired the strength of the women in our family. You were born in 1857, just a few years after the pioneers settled Manti. What was your childhood like?

Sarah:
Hard, child. But we didn’t know it was hard—we just called it living. Manti was little more than cabins and open land when I was a girl. I remember winters that froze your eyelashes shut, and summers that scorched the fields. But there was also laughter, babies born in tiny rooms, hymns sung by firelight, and a sense that we were building something that mattered.

EHT:
Did you always feel rooted in that land?

Sarah:
I did. Utah soil was in my blood, and so was faith. My parents crossed plains to be there, and I felt their footsteps behind mine, always. But later in life, when we moved to New Mexico, I learned that roots don’t always grow in the same soil—they grow in people, too.

EHT:
You’re holding the hands of my mother in one of the few photographs I have. What do you remember about Joyce as a little girl?

Sarah:
Oh, Joyce. She had the curiosity of a fox and the heart of a dove. Even then, I could tell she’d carry pieces of me long after I was gone. She’d tug on my apron and ask questions—never ending!—about everything from butter churning to why stars twinkled. I suppose some of those questions got passed on to you, didn’t they?

EHT:
They did. I think you’d be amazed at the world I live in now. We speak across screens, drive cars that don’t need horses, and have machines that answer questions for us. Even this interview is happening because of something called artificial intelligence.

Sarah:
[Chuckles softly.] I never would’ve imagined such things. But I’ve learned that every generation thinks the next is growing too fast—and every generation is right. Still, it’s not the world you inherit that matters most, it’s the heart you bring to it.

EHT:
That’s beautiful. If you could pass on just one piece of advice to me—and maybe to my children—what would it be?

Sarah:
Live with memory, not just ambition. Know who you come from. Speak the names of the forgotten. And when you gather with family, even if it’s just for supper, make it holy in your own quiet way. That’s how we carry the past forward—not in books, but in moments.

Would you like me to expand this into a longer conversation—with more historical references, deeper emotion, or specific family memories? Or would you like EHT to start asking her own questions next?

You said:

EHT: Please tell me what a typical day would be for you raising 10 children during pioneer days and then later during the depression.

ChatGPT said:

Absolutely—here’s how that next part of the interview might unfold:

EHT:
Please tell me what a typical day would be for you raising 10 children—first during the pioneer days in Utah, and then later, during the Great Depression in New Mexico.

Sarah Johanna Peterson:
Oh, my dear EHT… one day could fill a book, and ten children could fill a barn—and sometimes did.

In Utah, during those early pioneer years, life was measured by sun and season, not clocks. I’d rise before the light, long before the children stirred. I had bread to knead, water to fetch from the well, and sometimes a fire to coax back from ashes. The boys, if old enough, would be off helping their father—milking cows or repairing fence posts. The girls helped me—though there was never enough help to go around.

We made everything we used—soap, candles, quilts, even some of our clothes. Laundry was a full day’s work, done with washboards and blistered hands. We dried it on lines strung between cottonwoods and prayed for good weather.

Meals weren’t just food—they were production. Biscuits, beans, sometimes salted pork if we were lucky. I kept a root cellar for potatoes, and we jarred fruit all summer just to taste it again come January. I taught the children their letters at the table, between chores. No one had time for idleness; even the little ones had small jobs—sorting beans, gathering kindling, minding chickens.

But despite the hardship, there was joy. We sang as we worked. The older ones cared for the younger. And at night, when the house was dark but the children were near, I felt rich in a way no money could measure.

EHT:
And during the Depression?

Sarah:
That was a different kind of hard. In Utah, we worked for survival. In Gallup, during the Depression, we worked against despair.

By then, my children were mostly grown, but they had children of their own—and some had come home because jobs were gone, food was short, and no one quite knew what tomorrow would bring. The house was crowded again. I cooked for more mouths than chairs we had. We bartered what we could, mended clothes until there was no cloth left to patch, and scraped together what pride we could hold onto.

But I’ll tell you something—love doesn’t shrink in hard times. It expands. We shared what we had with neighbors. We laughed when we could. We believed that hard times pass—even if they pass slowly.

EHT:
You make it sound both exhausting and beautiful.

Sarah:
It was both, child. Life usually is.

Would you like to continue this conversation with a question about faith, marriage, community, or a specific historical event? I can help shape the whole exchange into a story or performance script if you’d like.

You said:

Here is some information on Sarah that I found on familysearch.org and wonder if we it would help to redo the interview with this information as background.

[Note: Here I cut and pasted two lengthy paragraphs of text from the memories section of familysearch.org for Sarah. The AI completely incorporated all details in its response below and to avoid redundancy I omit the inputted text here.]

ChatGPT said:

Updated saved memory

This is a rich and beautiful portrait of Sarah Johanna Petersen—thank you for sharing it. With these vivid details, we can absolutely redo or expand the interview to reflect her real experiences more authentically.

Here’s how we might begin the new, historically grounded version of the interview, drawing on everything you’ve provided:

A Reimagined Interview with Sarah Johanna Petersen (Crowther)

EHT interviewing her grandmother, circa late 1930s

EHT:
Grandma Sarah, I’ve always admired your strength, but reading about your life has made me even more in awe. Ten children, a three-room log cabin, homemade quilts and coats—how did you manage all of that?

Sarah:
[Chuckles softly.] Well now, I suppose I managed the same way every mother does: one task, one prayer, one breath at a time. There wasn’t much choice, really. When you’ve got ten little mouths looking up at you, needing comfort, food, and warmth—you don’t sit down and wonder if you can do it. You just start doing.

Our house in Fountain Green was small, but it was full—of voices, smells, quilts, and love. We had stoves in each room and a cot or two that folded out when space got tight, which was always. I kept that home clean, always. Not because someone told me to—but because I believed that the way a home feels stays with a child forever.

EHT:
Your daughters said you were a wonderful cook and seamstress—and that everything always smelled like good food. What was your favorite thing to make?

Sarah:
Bread. Not because it was fancy, but because it meant we had enough flour, and the house would fill with that warm, yeasty smell that told the children, “Mama’s here, and everything’s alright.” I churned our butter and stored it down in the cold cellar. I made our soap, our stockings, and the coats the children wore—cut from used garments townsfolk gave me. It wasn’t charity. It was transformation.

EHT:
And quilting? I read you made all the quilts and mattresses.

Sarah:
Oh yes. Quilting was where beauty lived, even when life was rough. I always told my girls: “A task thoroughly done will mean something to you all your life.” Quilts were warmth, but they were also lessons in patience, thrift, and care. Every stitch said, I see you. I care for you. Even when the straw in the mattresses rustled more than the kids did.

EHT:
Your life changed so much after Grandpa Thomas passed away in 1920. How did you get through that?

Sarah:
Losing Tom was like losing part of the foundation under our little house. He’d eaten something bad while out shearing sheep—ptomaine poisoning. Gone in two days. I had ten children, the youngest barely six. But grief doesn’t stop the potatoes from needing peeling or the fires from needing stoking.

I married again in 1926—to Christian Ottesen, my brother-in-law. It seemed the right thing at the time. But after a few years in Huntington, I came back home alone. My roots were in Fountain Green, and so was my strength.

EHT:
One story really stood out to me. When your daughter went to pay a bill, the man said if all his customers were as honest as you, he’d never worry. That must’ve made you proud.

Sarah:
It did. Honesty was never a performance—it was just how I believed folks should live. If I had a nickel, it went where it was owed. That day, I think my daughter realized that character isn’t something you teach with words, but with habits. I was proud of her, too.

EHT:
I wish I could have known you in person. But even through your quilts, your recipes, your values—I feel like I do.

Sarah:
That’s all a woman like me could hope for. That the things I stitched and cooked and spoke quietly into the air would find their way into the hands and hearts of those yet to come.

Would you like to continue this further—perhaps with a few questions about her children, her faith, or her thoughts on the changes she saw during her life (from wagons to radios)? I’d also be glad to format this as a short monologue, printed keepsake, or family history chapter.

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