I have to explain the situation first.
I have been researching my ancestry for several years with some reasonable success. One of the two mysteries that have eluded me (and others) is the heritage of my great-great grandfather. He was born David Hertzberg (1831-1909) and married Henrietta Schoenthal in 1853. His father is listed on the marriage certificate as Isaac Hertzberg. However, in the 1861 census, David is listed as David Marks. We don’t know why or when he changed his name, nor what his ancestry is beyond his father being Isaac Hertzberg, thought to be from Hannover, Germany.
I had been using ChatGPT for a while and decided to ask the AI for help. Why would he have changed his name?
ChatGPT had some very interesting thoughts on the topic and I was impressed.
Last week, I decided to see if I could go further.
I had uploaded a photo of the certified copy of the marriage certificate. It had been sent to me by a lady who had done a tremendous amount of research in the area. She is a distant relative of Henrietta Schoenthal and a DNA match of mine.
The photo was not very clear, so I asked ChatGPT to make it clearer. It wasn’t very successful and I asked it to tell me what all the text said.
This is where it went haywire.
Instead of simply telling me what the text said, the AI changed it based on the…
