The Buckinghamshire Archives said…
We’ve had a few enquiries come in after chatbots told researchers that we hold documents we don’t actually look after
…in response to a warning from the ICRC about AI nonsense-bots generating fabricated references because they are designed to spew out something that looks like an answer even if there is no answer available.
Having fallen down a family history rabbit hole recently it seems that such erroneous content is not limited to AI bots.
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Birth dates before 1st July 1837, when a national register started, are endlessly variable and a person may have five or more different years recorded as their birth year during their lifetime.
- As old records are handwritten details such as surnames may not be deciphered correctly.
- Just because somebody ticked the box confirming that all the information provided on a census form is true and accurate does not mean that all the information provided on the form is true and/or accurate.
- The transcribers of census forms can miss people from a listing because they were ‘hidden’ on the next page.
- Even if somebody is included in another family tree it does not mean that person actually existed.