Artificial intelligence meets a box of family letters

I was born in New Jersey in 1946 but I didn't stick around. For some reason my parents decided to move to Los Angeles when I was 3 months old. They packed what they could in suitcases, boarded the plane, and landed in LA the next day after a grueling journey. I know this because Dad told me when I was a kid. He sounded annoyed even then, years later, because he said I puked on his lap during the entire flight. Sorry Dad. Really.

Why did they make that trip? I have pieced together bits of information along the way. For example, my dad did not have a job when he got there, and my parents did not know anyone there at the time. When I was younger, I didn't care. My parents died before I ever had the sense to ask. Now as an older guy looking back over my shoulder and reviewing the decades, it has become an abiding mystery.

The shoebox

Mom died in 2009. I was delegated by our small remaining family to clean out the house and prepare it for sale. I couldn't save much because she lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I lived in Anchorage. One thing I did save, however, was the shoebox.

It was a large shoebox packed with hundreds of letters. Most of them were thin and flimsy because that's how letters were during the war. They ranged from the 1930s through the 1950s. It appeared that most of them reflected the wartime romance of my parents, but many were from family and friends.

For decades I wanted to read those letters. Part of it was just the idea of learning something of my family history. Part of it was the mystery. Why did they abandon New Jersey for California in 1946? The answer was likely in the letters. On the other hand, I did not read most of the letters between my mother and father because I was...embarrassed? It felt intrusive. I just couldn't do it.

Epiphany!

Then, in recent years, along came artificial intelligence (AI). I have spent some time using AI, exploring it, and playing with it, making a modest effort to keep up as a casual consumer. One day a few months ago: epiphany! AI could read the letters and help me solve the family mystery about the move to Los Angeles. Kind of a compromise: I learn what I want and leave the romantic communications to Mom, Dad, and posterity.

So I logged into Google's NotebookLM and set up my own account, all for free. NotebookLM is an application specially suited to creating a personal database from large numbers of documents such as letters. It can summarize them, analyze them, and search for stuff in them. It will even accept handwritten letters and convert them into text. At the risk of sounding like a cult member: It is amazing, quite like magic, and easy to learn.

For the details I logged into a free version of Google's AI, Gemini, and just started asking how to do this project. After some back and forth I had a simple workflow which involved using my smartphone to take the images, which I then uploaded into NotebookLM. Easy peasy.

Eighty-year-old letters

I figured the answer to the LA mystery had to be in the letters from 1945 and early 1946. I loaded a few dozen into NotebookLM and got ready to ask questions about the big move. However, before I did anything, NotebookLM decided to create a family story narrative from all the letters I had uploaded. Very cool.

But the mystery remained. Not a word about California no matter how I queried Gemini about all those letters. Someday I'll load up more letters and ask again. But then I got to thinking, "I can't be the first person who has digitized family documents and queried AI about them." I wasn't, but be forewarned: "Creepy" and "wonderful" are in the eye of the beholder.

I learned that you can instruct NotebookLM to respond in the first person and in the writing style of your departed loved one. Then you can have a kind of high-tech keyboard seance to relive memories with the departed. I have no intention of doing this.

And there is StoryFile. While still living, your loved one is videoed answering dozens or a couple hundred questions. AI puts it all together in a package. After death you can have a simulated "natural" conversation with your loved one while watching them on video speaking in their own voice. Prices range from free to several hundred dollars.

Joyful memories or creepy technology. Your choice.

Lawrence D. Weiss is a UAA Professor of Public health, Emeritus, creator of the UAA Master of Public health program, and author of several books and numerous articles.