I’m by no means an expert in AI applications, and like most, I’m experimenting with Generative AI to become more efficient and productive. However, I’m also applying AI personally in way that might be helpful to others — capturing and curating family stories.

Here's how I first got interested in using AI in my personal life:

A few years ago, I purchased a subscription to Storyworth, which is an excellent service that prompts family members to answer questions about their life by email, then curates their responses in a book that can be passed down as a family heirloom. Great concept. One flaw — what do you do if a family member is insecure about their writing, has vision problems, or might be overwhelmed by writing answers to dozens of questions on their own? It’s a challenge I struggled with until a friend and mentor shared that she'd been recording stories from her mother recently. Then it clicked for me -- this is a no-brainer use case for Generative AI.

In my day job, I’ve had great success using Otter.ai. Seriously, if you have a gig that requires recording events, interviews, etc., their voice transcription is the best I’ve seen — even in the free version.

Using Otter.ai, all I need to do is record my family member — in this case my Dad — using Otter.ai, and within minutes I have a full transcript. Feed that through your Generative AI tool of choice, like ChatGPT, and you can quickly generate a summary your family member can approve or edit, rather than have to write from scratch.

So, this year my goal is to use AI to preserve conversations with my father.

I’ll provide an update as this experiment plays out and offer any pros and cons or dos and don’ts I learn along the way.