A new application powered by artificial intelligence aims to make family tree research a little easier. Just enter any old photo; The artificial intelligence-assisted algorithm can predict the year the photo was taken.
The application called PhotoDater and recently launched by MyHeritage; It allows users to discover family history using photos, historical records and genetic data.
You need a free MyHeritage account to use the tool. It is currently only available on desktop, but it is planned to come to the mobile side soon. The algorithm behind PhotoDater was trained on tens of thousands of precisely dated photos taken between 1860 and 1990. By scanning this data, the AI learned which features (like clothes, hairstyles, facial hair, furniture, and other objects) were associated with a specific time period.
The app can predict with reasonable accuracy the year the photo was taken. This is just one of the ways artificial intelligence contributes to uncovering historical information. In 2020, a YouTuber used artificial intelligence to refresh footage of the world’s oldest known film, a short film called Roundhay Garden Scene shot in 1888.
Artificial intelligence also aids in the academic study of human history. For example, scientists recently used artificial intelligence to identify the geoglyph of the Nazca Lines carved in the deserts of Southern Peru thousands of years ago.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving the world into the future, but it is also proving to be an invaluable tool for understanding the past.
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