NCGS Fall Conference 2025

Recently I had the pleasure of presenting at, and attending, the North Carolina Genealogical Society Fall Conference 2025. The Conference was very well planned and organized at a wonderful venue with great food. As much as I appreciate the reach of virtual presentations to give presentations at many places far from where I am based, it was nice to be with a group of genealogists, learning and chatting.  

At the Conference, I presented sessions about Military Research and Artificial Intelligence (AI). When speaking about military research, I always customize my presentation to include finding military records for the location of the audience. North Carolina has great resources, both in person and online!

With a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, I am always reaching deep into the technology of AI to learn its inner workings, and to then share an understanding of how it works and how to use it. As a graduate school professor in cybersecurity, and having tested computer code used on military aircraft for years, I also have a perspective about what we should be concerned about and what can go wrong.

What was also fantastic about the Conference was that people could attend the lectures virtually. The NCGS members and technical staff streamed the presentations and recorded them for attendees to watch later. I knew everything was working when questions from online viewers came during the lectures and insightful questions via email were waiting when I returned to my hotel.

Even though my research in North Carolina is limited to a few months during WWII at Camp Davis, I did attend J. Mark Lowe’s presentation, “Creating North Carolina Local and Regional Locality Guides.” (Mark’s smile is even bigger in person!) The presentation definitely had information that I will carry forward to the places where I do research. I will never look at detailed maps the same way again.

I attended another terrific presentation about using DNA to solve maternal surnames by Kate Penney Howard. Jon Smith’s workshop about using AI for creating locality guides certainly shifted my mindset from the free form text I have been using, and his tips about using Gemini in Chrome tabs were game changers. Thankfully the presentations were recorded so that I can enjoy Diane L. Richard’s presentation about Researching Your Ancestors as Kids. (Diane and I share an educational experience: Go RPI Engineers!)

The beginning-to-intermediate artificial intelligence presentation I gave on the first morning may have provided a warm-up for Steve Little’s intermediate artificial intelligence presentation. It is always interesting to see how other genealogists are using AI tools, and how its use is gaining acceptance. Promise to keep checking your output and stay sensitive to privacy concerns!

Thank you to everyone who planned and worked on making the 2025 North Carolina Genealogical Society Annual Conference such a great experience, to the audience members who shared their time with me, and all the other instructors and attendees for a rewarding and fun time!

Recent AI Developments

Have you been following the latest in AI?

One thing I always guarantee during my presentations is that AI models will change! There have been changes to ChatGPT’s video generating model, Sora. As a result, I don’t see Sora anymore when I login to my Plus account on ChatGPT. Now I have to login separately to use Sora. Part of the change is that Sora 2 is now available! Pro users can use it now, but as a Plus user, it may be a while before I get a chance. You can read about the new video model at: https://openai.com/index/sora-2/

An AI ‘actor’ known as Tilly Norwood has been provoking Hollywood. She is a purely AI-generated character coming from Xicoia, the AI division of Particle6. You can watch her, and a cast of AI-generated characters in a sketch written by ChatGPT: AI Commissioner | Comedy Sketch | Particle6

When exploring the world of copyright and artificial intelligence, you may want to check out the U.S Copyright Office’s 3-part Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence that can be viewed and downloaded at https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ Purely AI-generated content is not protected by copyright. There has to be a human contribution.

AI copyright infringement lawsuits continue, with the latest one being Warner Bros. Discovery against Midjourney, an AI image generator. You can read about it at:  https://apnews.com/article/warner-bros-midjourney-ai-copyright-lawsuit-dc-studios-b87d80d7b4a4dfdcf0ee149d30830551 This article describes how this AI can output images that violate copyright.

Meanwhile, some lawsuits are drawing to a close. Although a judge stated that Anthropic AI training a model using authors’ material was fair use, the problem was that it used pirated versions of the books for that training. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle this copyright infringement lawsuit, but the court will need to approve this settlement. If approved, the authors of over 500,000 books will each receive about $3,000. You can read an NPR article about it: “Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit” at https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5529404/anthropic-settlement-authors-copyright-ai.

NCGS 2025 Fall Conference

Will I see you there?

I am excited to be invited to present in person and online!

On Friday, I will be presenting Ancestors, AI, and Prompt Engineering.

On Saturday, I will be presenting a Crash Course in Researching Ancestors in the US Military.

There are great speakers, and great talks, Friday and Saturday. There is also an optional Beginner Day on Thursday, featuring four lectures just for beginners!

Rev. Fr. Kennedy and AI

It has been a while since there has been a blog post. In that time, I have been working on my newest presentation, Mining Morning Reports for Genealogical Gold. You can read a review here: https://aweekofgenealogy.com/comments

In addition to getting ready for other presentations, I have also been experimenting with the NARA Catalog API to get an alternate way of searching the catalog.

I did spend some time with AI offerings in my research into the Rev. Fr. Thomas J. Kennedy.

First, I uploaded the sketch that I have of him from the newspaper to ChatGPT and prompted it to: Change this line drawing into a picture

A few liberties were taken by the built-in DALL·E image generation system when creating this image. In the sketch it does appear that he is probably wearing a cassock of the time, but the details of buttons and the notch in the collar are not evident in the sketch.

I may need to try this process again with a stricter prompt to rein in ChatGPT’s creative vision.

I looked up his eye color recorded in a Civil War roster and asked in a follow-on prompt asked: can the image be changed so that his eyes are more grey

The resulting image looked less like the sketch.

Since the Rev. Fr. Kennedy was dying at the time of the column in the Brooklyn Eagle, it finally occurred to me that there must have been a photo of him that was used as the basis of this sketch. I have not located one yet. This image also looks like that of a younger man. My focus has been on the data, but it seems I may need to be searching for the original photo of him. Does the original photo still exist? (Although the Archivist at the Diocesan Archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn was very helpful, they did not have a deceased priest personnel file for him at in their archives because he had died in Kentucky and not in Brooklyn.)

Using the original sketch, I did a Google Image search at https://images.google.com, adding the search terms: Kennedy Brooklyn

Naturally, our blog posts showed up, and data about the life of the Rev Fr. Thomas J. Kennedy extracted from the blog posts appeared in the AI summary. Many of the photos that were returned in the results were of men religious of all different faiths.

The “Dive Deeper in AI Mode” button that appeared at the end of the AI Summary made me curious, so I clicked on it. Gemini let me know the number of sites it was searching, and informed me about two sites: our blog and the New York Times. There was an article from the NY Times dated Oct. 5, 1901: “Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying.”

Our county library has a subscription to the ProQuest Historical Newspapers, which includes the New York Times, so I logged in and searched for the article using these search terms:

Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying 1901

There were three results, two of which were ads from the 1970s.

The New York Times article was succinct and did not offer more information than the article in the Brooklyn Eagle. It was actually published several days after his death in Kentucky. It mentioned that he retired about a year ago, and that his ill health for the reason for his pension. He was in Kentucky, at a Trappist Monastery. He was well-known in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) circles.

Of course I downloaded a pdf file with the article, a pdf file with the whole newspaper page, and a (brief) citation in Chicago style: “Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying.” 1901., Oct 05 New York Times (1857-1922), 9. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/rev-t-j-kennedy-said-be-dying/docview/96159883/se-2. (Further reproduction of New York Times articles is prohibited without permission.)

There is certainly more to do to fill in this ancestor’s story, but the use of the AI tools ChatGPT and Gemini inspired both my creativity and my next steps in the research.

New Book: ChatGPT and Learning A Language

If you have read this blog or heard my talks, you probably know that I have incorporated ChatGPT into my workflow. The basic version of ChatGPT supports a lot of the mundane tasks I do, and in the “Crash Course on ChatGPT and…” book series, I am sharing lessons I learned and the prompts that were helpful.

This time, the tasks go beyond genealogy and into learning a new language. ChatGPT has the potential to be immensely helpful when beginning to learn a new language. It can also explain the intricacies of a language to an English-speaking person in an understandable manner. I was excited about what ChatGPT could do to help the process, and wanted to share it in this brief book, “Crash Course on ChatGPT and Learning A Language.” (A softcover book will follow soon!)

Have you ever wanted a private tutor to help you learn a foreign language? Have you wished for lessons that were customized just for you? While nothing can replace being part of a community of people fluent in a language, ChatGPT can tap into its vast knowledge to provide you with a patient and tireless personal tutor- all you have to do is ask. It can even map out an entire course for you to follow. You can learn using the suggested lessons, then have ChatGPT test you with quizzes and puzzles, or converse with you (in text). It can even generate written content in a different language for you to read or translate. The book will get you started with the skills needed in prompt engineering when learning a new language. In the sections of this book, you will learn how to get an account and start using ChatGPT. Then you will find ideas on how to use ChatGPT to learn a language. Last comes suggested prompts that are for you to use to get started. Throughout the book there will be privacy considerations and potential limitations you might face.

The Kindle Edition of “Crash Course on ChatGPT and Learning A Language” is available now on Amazon. A softcover version will be available soon!

Generate Images With A Free ChatGPT Account

Did you know that OpenAI allows users to generate images with a free account? At the time of writing this blog post, ChatGPT allows the use of DALL·E to generate two images per day with a free account.

All you have to do is ask, by typing in the prompt.

CAVEAT: Always research the ownership of any images generated in an AI tool before you consider publishing them.

PROMPT: Create an image of an airplane flying over art deco buildings

ChatGPT spent a little time and created an image.

At the bottom of the image, ChatGPT gave me some suggestions on what I might ask it to do next.

You can hover your mouse over the image to see the icons for giving feedback, or downloading the image as a WEBP file.

In one experiment ChatGPT showed me that it was creating an image, and then pronounced it complete, but there was no image. So I asked: where is it?

ChatGPT proceeded to ensure that this time I received the image. This second try to get the image to me did not count against my two images per day.

I tried another experiment. I generated two images. When ChatGPT told me “Let me know if you’d like to modify or add anything!” after the second image, I was not sure if that would count toward my daily limit of two images.

So I asked ChatGPT to modify the image, and was given that modified image. Then I received this alert:

Converting WEBP to JPG file format

You might be wondering how to convert a WEBP file to another format. The simplest way in Windows 11 is to open the image using the Photos app.

Select “Edit.”

An alert pops up that the Photos app can not save in WEBP format (which is what I wanted), so select Save Options -> Save as copy.

The dialog box that opened offers a choice of formats in which to save the image.

I chose the .jpg extension to save the image in a JPEG format.

Give it a try and let me know how you do!