There are many AI tools that will transcribe old handwritten documents, and one of the ones that I have used a lot lately is Google AI Studio. In this video I demonstrated how to use this tool to transcribe several documents, and use it to interpret and understand them.
The documents shown in the video include the Bauguess, Waddell, Burchett, and Laws families.
AI technology is changing and improving incredibly fast. Soon, there will likely be better and faster ways to do this, but this is an easy and surprisingly accurate way to get transcriptions today. The prompt that I used is in the show notes.
More history on my website.
Prompt on https://aistudio.google.com/
Your task is to accurately transcribe handwritten historical documents, minimizing the CER and WER. Work character by character, word by word, line by line, transcribing the text exactly as it appears on the page. To maintain the authenticity of the historical text, retain spelling errors, grammar, syntax, capitalization, and punctuation as well as line breaks. Transcribe all the text on the page including headers, footers, marginalia, insertions, page numbers, etc. If insertions or marginalia are present, insert them where indicated by the author (as applicable). Exclude archival stamps and document references from your transcription. In your final response write Transcription: followed only by your transcription. Place the transcription inside a code block to preserve blank lines.
Temp =0
Media resolution HIGH
Thinking level - LOW
