Did you attend RootsTech 2024 either in person or virtually? If so, were you amazed at all of the AI tools introduced? While I’ve found some drawbacks to the use of AI tools, the ability to use AI to do an every word search of newspapers (Ancestry – Newspapers) or deeds and wills (FamilySearch – Experimental Labs) is fantastic. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m still not going to trust AI technology to write my blog posts (AI-Fiction). However, the ability to not only index but transcribe records is a game changer.
I’m not sure how or where I saw this during RootsTech, but I watched in fascination as someone drug an image of a newspaper article into an AI tool and the tool transcribed the article. Since I could not remember the name of the tool or even where I saw this demonstrated, I did a Google search for “AI tool transcribe images”. One of the results was the post, Top 5 Image to Text AI Tools in 2023. Browsing thru the list, I decided to check out Sider’s Sidebar Chrome Extension.
I went to the Sider.ai site and at the top of the page was a button to add the extension to Chrome. I simply clicked on the Add to Chrome button and allowed the installation.
Once I downloaded and installed the extension, I located the extension icon in the upper right corner of my Chrome toolbar and clicked on it.
An EXTENSIONS menu opened allowing me to click on Sider. (Clicking on MANAGE EXTENSIONS allows me to turn on/off an extension. Thus, I can have it installed but not running if I wish.)
Clicking on Sider: ChatGPT Sidebar in my extension list opens a vertical panel to the right of my browser window for ‘Chat’.
Instead of typing a question, I simply drug an image of a newspaper article onto the panel. That changed the view to allow me to ‘drop’ the image into the panel.
After dropping the image, it placed it in the ‘prompt’ box at the bottom of the panel and gave me two options:
- Extract text from image
- Describe the image
When I clicked on ‘Extract Text from Image’ it moved the image to the top of teh panel and very quickly transcribed the image.
The only error I could find in the transcription was the missing headline.
The review indicated that it could also transcribe handwriting – but only in English.
So, I tried a deed. My first attempt was rejected due to the size of the image.
Since the image was of both pages of deeds from a deed book, I simply cropped out the portion that I wanted and tried again. Unfortunately, the handwriting transcription was not as successful.
With FamilySearch’s new Experimental Search of deeds, I doubt that I would need the ability to transcribe handwriting very often. However I can see myself using this tool almost daily. Thus, I was curious about the cost. Another Google search brought up a chatbox discussing the price.
According to the chat, the extension is FREE. However, some features may require a premium subscription. There is also a limit of 30 queries/day on the free version.
Now to get back to using another AI tool to locate those articles and deeds.
Note: This post is being published on Monday, March 11th which means that at 11 a.m. I will be joining in on Mondays with Myrt. For more information, join the Dear Myrtle group on Facebook.
