An interesting article by Rebecca Olds and published in the Deseret News web site will interest many genealogists:

FamilySearch has made more than 2.6 billion historical resources available to the public, and according to John Alexander who is a senior product manager there, there’s a lot more on the way. It’s just a matter of getting the documents transcribed.

More than 5 billion more documents — collected and converted to digital images — need to be transcribed to make them searchable and usable in FamilySearch’s database.

And 1 to 2 million more are added every single day.

With the development of new artificial intelligence technology, there’s more hope of getting billions of records to families looking for information about their relatives in as little as five years. And it’s already being tested and used.

“In just a couple of hours, the computer can index more than you or I could do in a whole lifetime if we did nothing besides indexing for the rest of our lives,” Alexander said. “So in terms of efficiency, it’s very fast.

Currently, it’s being taught — yes, “taught” like a child — English, Spanish and Portuguese, with plans for Italian in 2023.

Teaching AI to read hand-writing

You can read the full article at: https://www.deseret.com/2023/3/18/23622262/ai-family-history-familysearch.