Can ChatGPT read old handwriting?
General chatbots can read some old handwriting, but they often smooth over doubtful words without marking them. FamilyLore marks where it is unsure, and publishes how often its readings match manual transcriptions on the scripts it measures.
Your first three pages need no account and no card.
How FamilyLore marks doubtful words in an old letter
A dotted underline marks a word FamilyLore was unsure of; [?] is its own note on a doubtful reading.
Johann Kilian to Gotthold Albert Gumlich · 20 May 1858
- Serbin (Low Pinoak Settlement) Bastrop County,
- Texas, den 20sten Mai 1858.
- Geliebter Bruder im Herrn!
- Den Empfang Deines lieben Schreibens vom 16ten März 1858
- bescheinige ich hiermit schon jetzt, weil ich den Andreas Kiesling[?]
- auf den Todtenschein für seine Eltern nicht zu lange warten
Also on the shelf: Karl and Käthe Kollwitz’s field-post letter of 1914, in Kurrent
How well it reads, measured
| Script | Pages | Characters read correctly | Names, dates and numbers right | Misread words it marked | Last run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kurrent and Sütterlin15 pages · 3 Nov 2026 | 15 | 83%Characters read correctly | 75%Names, dates and numbers right | 85%Misread words it marked | 3 Nov 2026 |
| Russian and Ukrainian7 pages · 3 Nov 2026 | 7 | 86%Characters read correctly | 69%Names, dates and numbers right | 80%Misread words it marked | 3 Nov 2026 |
FamilyLore measures and reports how often its readings match manual transcriptions on historical letters. How well FamilyLore reads
Questions
- Can’t ChatGPT do this?
- A general chatbot can read some old handwriting, sometimes well, but it usually hands you clean text with no sign of which words it guessed, and its makers publish no figures for these scripts; FamilyLore marks the words it is unsure of and publishes how often it reads correctly, in the table above.
- Why do general chatbots misread historical names and dates?
- Large language models predict likely text based on modern language patterns. In historical scripts, uncommon surnames, archaic spellings, and place names have few modern context clues, so chatbots often substitute plausible-sounding modern words without flagging the change.
- What if it reads a word wrong?
- Tap a word to see the other readings FamilyLore weighed, and correct it if you know better. The translation is redone from your correction. Most misread words carry a mark, but not every one, so a name or a date that matters is worth checking against the photo.
- Who sees my pages?
- Only you. A page becomes public only if you share it, and then only to people who have the link. Deleting your account deletes the photos you uploaded.
What FamilyLore doesn’t read well yet
- Registers and census tables set out in columns. These are not measured yet.
- Severely faded ink and handwriting that runs across page margins. Faded pages are measured on only a few pages so far.
- Uncommon dialects and non-standard shorthand systems.
From photo to text in three steps
Take a photo of the page
Lay the sheet flat, in daylight and without flash. A phone photo of the whole page is enough.
Upload it
“German (Kurrent)” is already chosen. If you know roughly when it was written, pick the era.
Read it
You get the page as it was written, in modern spelling, and in English. Correct a word you know better yourself.
Rather read it yourself?