In today’s column, I examine the trend of arranging to hire a personal biographer who will aid you in memorably capturing your family’s legacy. These professional biographers can be expensive, and you never know what quality of effort they’ll put in. That being said, a savvy biographer can indubitably be the key to getting your family legacy fully documented and accomplished with a full-flavored flourish.
A twist to this topic is that you can use generative AI and large language models (LLMs) instead of a human biographer.
Surprised?
If you are already familiar with the latest AI, using LLMs for family legacy rendering isn’t much of a mental leap. You are likely to immediately realize this can be readily undertaken. Those unaware of generative AI capabilities are undoubtedly intrigued about whether AI can truly handle this highly personalized chore.
Let’s talk about it.
This analysis of an innovative proposition is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here).
The Path To Personal Biographical Compilations
Suppose you are contemplating putting together a personal biography. The reason for doing so might be that you wish to hand along what you know about your family history to your offspring and related relatives. In the past, there used to be a relatively common practice of handing down handwritten letters from one generation to the next that detailed each respective generation. This was a ready-made way to capture a family legacy.
Letter writing is something rarely done anymore.
Sad face.
No worries. Nowadays, you can skip the handwritten approach anyway and dive directly into typing up your personal history. Just use any word processing package and get underway. In addition, it is usually helpful to gather any associated documents that might be instrumental in telling the story of your family. You might scan those in to try and preserve them, making them readily digitally accessible.
Overall, here are the six major steps involved when devising a personal biography:
- (1) Gathering and organizing family information
- (2) Creating personalized narratives of family members
- (3) Fact-checking and enhancing accuracy
- (4) Multimedia integration
- (5) Iterative collaboration with you and others
- (6) Archiving online/offline and providing accessibility
The activity of specifying a family legacy is likely to involve more than just your solitary thoughts. The odds are that you’ll ask other members of your family or even outsiders to contribute what they know of the family legacy. Besides the chore of getting them to participate, another factor to be weighed is the need for fact-checking and verifying the accuracy of what is being claimed.
Needless to say, some might exaggerate, or shall we say “misremember” the truth of what has taken place.
Using Generative AI As Your Personal Biographer
An alternative to using a human biographer and/or a conventional word processing package consists of directly using generative AI as your personal biographer. One key advantage is that the AI will walk you through what needs to be undertaken. You merely follow step-by-step guidance given by the AI.
Easy-peasy.
An additional and vital benefit is that AI can interpret what you have to say, plus the AI can even compose portions of the biography on your behalf. AI is a big productivity booster for this task. But I should also caution you that some of the AI capabilities can potentially undercut your efforts and thus you’ll need to be quite mindful of how you leverage AI.
You see, most uses of generative AI are a dual-edged sword, see my detailed explanation at the link here. There are upsides and downsides. I’ll cover both to make sure you have a heads-up on what’s what.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so I logged into a popular generative AI app and pretended that I wanted to have the AI be my personal biographer. You can use any of the major LLMs such as OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Meta Llama, Google Gemini, etc.
I decided to use fake data since I didn’t want the AI to collect my private info. Allow me to elaborate on that notable point. You might not realize that most of the generative AI apps have in their licensing agreement that you agree to let them access and make use of any info you enter, see the details on this consideration at the link here. Whether you are comfortable entering your personal story into AI is a choice you’ll need to make. Some of the AI apps have settings that allow you to restrict the vendor from reusing your entered info.
Still, no matter what the vendor claims they will do with your data, please realize that risks remain.
Example Of AI As Your Biographer
The first thing you need to do when getting AI underway on this task is indicate what you intend to take on. A prompt by you needs to stipulate that you want generative AI to aid in preparing your personal biography. Each of the various generative AI apps will respond differently, though by and large, they will pretty much be similar to the example that I show here.
Here we go.
- My entered prompt: “I would like you to be my personal biographer and capture my family’s legacy.”
- Generative AI response: “I’m thrilled to help document your family’s legacy. To start, let’s establish a vision. How do you imagine this biography? A traditional family history, a collection of personal stories, or something else?”
- My entered prompt: “I’d like it to be a blend of personal stories and historical context, something my future children can read to understand where they come from.”
- Generative AI response: “That’s a beautiful vision! Let me know when you are ready to proceed.”
It is an encouraging sign that the AI will do well on this task because right away I was asked what type of biographical genre or approach I would prefer to have the AI abide by. Thus, rather than just jumping into the matter, the AI seemed to acknowledge that there is a myriad of ways to proceed. That’s reassuring news and suggests that the AI gets the drift of this intended effort.
Make sure to tell the AI whatever else you have in mind about the biographical endeavor. Do not assume that somehow generative AI can read your mind. We don’t have this as yet (efforts are underway to craft BMI or brain-machine interfaces, see my coverage at the link here, but that’s not in the cards today).
Getting Into The Details With The AI
Now that the upfront planning has been done, I can tell the AI to proceed forthwith.
Here’s what happened.
- My entered prompt: “I am ready to get started.”
- Generative AI response: “Let’s dive in. Can you share a favorite memory of your parents or grandparents that reflects their values or personality?”
- My entered prompt: “My dad used to tell this story about how he walked miles to school as a kid. It was his way of teaching us perseverance and gratitude.”
- Generative AI response: “That’s powerful. Would you like me to store that family aspect as is or would you like me to embellish the memory for you?”
- My entered prompt: “Go ahead and embellish it.”
- Generative AI response: Here’s a possible draft for that memory: One crisp autumn morning, your father, a young boy in his village when he was in his youth, laced up his worn shoes, determined to make the trek to school. The path was long, winding through fields and hills, but each step was a lesson in resilience — a lesson he would later pass on to his children as a cornerstone of their family values. How does that sound?”
Notice that the AI gave me an option to either store my biographical remark as is or I could have the AI embellish the memory. This is one of those dual-edged swords that I earlier mentioned. I explain why next.
The Straight Story Or The Fictionalized Version
Here’s why I refer to this matter as a dual-edged sword.
You can plainly see that the AI was able to turn my simple remark about my father into quite an entertaining tale. The troubling facet is that the story is entirely concocted and does not necessarily reflect what my dad actually encountered. Sure, it still retains the root notion that he would walk many miles to school, but the added flavoring suggests a context that might not reflect the reality of what my father experienced.
Mull over that impact.
Imagine that you have the AI continuously do this with all sorts of biographical tidbits. In a sense, the family legacy is going to be more so a fictional account than a real one. Will those who read the biography realize that the AI has generated fine details (well, fakery of sorts)? They might assume that you or someone else in the family had provided an actual eyewitness account.
The uplifting news is that this fictional composition is under your control. You can tell the AI to stick with the facts as you enter them. Or you can allow the AI to play with your indicated remarks, and then review the generated narrative with the AI. It is possible to iteratively confer with the AI to refine the content until you feel comfortable that the story adequately represents reality.
Of course, if you are desirous of having a fanciful biography and not capturing the exactitude of your family legacy, presumably the AI amplifications are going to be welcomed by you with open arms. I guess each person needs to decide whether they want a true facts biography or an enlarged version.
Going Forward With AI As Your Biographer
I’ve shown you briefly how to get underway with generative AI on the exciting task of capturing your family legacy. Nice.
There is a lot more to take into consideration, including these key points:
- (1) Difficulty ensuring accuracy and authenticity of the family history
- (2) Potential infusion of bias and skewed perspectives regarding the family
- (3) Privacy concerns associated with the family-entered data
- (4) Narratives by AI might be staid and lacking in human touch
- (5) Longevity of the AI storing and providing access to the family history
- (6) Fictionalization by AI that confounds the true family history
- (7) Potential costs associated with using AI for this purpose
Let’s quickly cover several of those insights.
First, how will you double-check whatever you or others in your family entered into the AI as to the veracity of what is being stated?
You can ask the AI to try and do a verification, especially if the AI has online access to the web. Perhaps there are news stories and other postings on the web that could corroborate the accuracy of what has been stated. On the other hand, unless your family is especially well-known, there might not be much on the public Internet to substantiate things.
Second, you will need to decide what to do about potential bias in the entered content. Suppose your uncle contends in his write-up that he single-handedly saved the family and was the legacy hero. Assuming that this is a bit of an overstatement, you can tell the AI to tone down the rhetoric. You can even ask the AI to sift through the entire kit-and-kaboodle of what your family legacy is and find spots that might warrant fine-tuning.
Third, I have already cautioned you about the potential privacy issues so please keep that at the top of your mind.
Fourth, one argument made by human biographers is that AI cannot match the human touch of handwriting your biography. A human personal biographer would interact with you on a human-to-human basis. Perhaps this will enable you to more deeply analyze and remember your family history.
Not everyone sees things that way. A counter perspective is that telling things to a fellow human can be intimidating or difficult for some. Another potential concern is that the biographer might have a particular bent on how they want to convey your history. Using AI generally puts you in more direct control, though again you miss out on the human touch.
In terms of the other remaining points of my above list, you should make sure to have the AI produce outputs that you can store someplace. I say this because you never know how long the AI maker of the generative AI app will be in business. If they go under, maybe all their stored AI conversations evaporate. Your best bet will be to periodically have AI produce PDFs or other outputs that you can save on your own storage and keep readily preserved.
Get Going Now On Your Biography And Don’t Wait
I offer some concluding thoughts for you to contemplate.
When is the best time to start putting together your personal biography?
Right now.
That is kind of a tongue-in-cheek witticism amongst those who do this for a living. Those in this niche would naturally want people to right away undertake a family legacy project. Might as well spur as much business as possible.
An additional sobering undertone to the one-liner is that if you wait to do your personal biography the odds are that you’ll have forgotten a lot of substantive and valued details. It will be much harder to devise a biography. It will be that much weaker or limited accordingly. Do things while the memories are fresh in your mind.
You must up the priority of a personal biography and strive with gusto to record your family legacy. This doesn’t just happen by happenstance. It takes a concerted mindset and determination.
Here is a parting remark for you.
George Santayana famously said this about families: “The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” By pursuing a personal biography, you are helping to paint the family masterpiece and ensure that the work of art remains forever available.
So, start painting your family legacy with AI (or, if you prefer, via a human biographer), but whatever way you go, proceed with haste and without delay.
