RootsMagic and Artificial Intelligence

RootsMagic
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Are you using AI in any way with your RootsMagic databases? This topic is intended to open discussion that sheds some light on what’s happening now, who is doing it, what lies ahead. I surmise that there may be several users beavering at it. And, judging from the activity in the Facebook group Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence, more who submit exported GEDCOM data or reports to AI services for analysis or transformation - it’s the others I’m more interested in, applying AI more directly on the RM database to answer questions, identify problems, standardize data, fill gaps in RM’s user interface, do some things faster than RM…

I’m aware of a couple of others than myself who have stated a deep involvement in this activity: @Mfriend commented on my blog post, Unlocking Your RootsMagic 10 Data: A Deep Dive into SQLite Queries (with AI) – SQLite Tools for RootsMagic that he is using Claude and Gemini Pro to develop complex SQLite queries (some 70!) of his database(s) in support of his dissertation.

@mooredan was the first commenter on the same page reporting he is “ using ChatGPT to come up with Python functions to help clean up the PlaceTable… I’m normalizing the names, stripping nonsensical data from the name and street addresses, and merging the duplicates.”

I’ve used the free DeepSeek and free Gemini Flash 2.5 to develop SQLite queries of RM databases which I’ve published either in a blog or forum post:

  • Lineage Loop Detector RM does not have one and does not prevent a person from becoming their own ancestor and descendant. Such loops has caused RM to hang up in some operations. The most common loop I’ve come across in databases people have sent me to help with are a child who is their own parent who is their own child… but some longer loops have also turned up.

  • Cousin Couples (or Couple Cousins) reports couples from the database who are cousins, another feature RM does not have.

  • Reverse Place Names RM10 fills an extra field in the PlaceTable with the name in reverse order when a place is added or updated. This query does an update of it on all user-defined Places. This came about when I helped another user convert Place Details into Places using queries developed for an earlier generation of RM that did not have the Reverse column.

I’ve also been working on alternatives to RM’s Set Relationships and Relationship Calculator to take into account the child-parent relationship (birth, adopted, foster,…)

What about RM Inc? Is the @rootsmagician diving into AI to help with coding? Is he working on interfacing the RM app to some AI service(s) to streamline the manual GEDCOM or report transfer? How about a local AI to allow users to supercharge current and new features?

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Actually, only quite recently since you introduce these concept on SQlite Roots Magic Website

board – I have play around with AI. In order to do so, you have to have a decent understanding of table designs , and more importantly the design of RM Tables. AI can make some wrong assumptions, however, you can tell it what mistake it made and it usually does a good job.

I was quite impressed on how well it usually codes things. Usually, I use for improving my code versus writing from scratch – I will continue to use more.

Kevin

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Annoying for systems running not in US/Uk system settings is the fact that it is not possible to enter geocodes (Longitude, Latitude) due to the , and . differences in the country settings. A little help gives the Gazetter feature in RM which works and can set geocodes also in the foreign country system settings.
But to geocode detailed places is not possible by Gazetter and does not make sense as the geocodes of gazetter are not precise enough.
So the only way to set the geocodes in foreign country settings is to use the sql database directly. There are free geocode pages like Geoapify which can help in automation of such task. But a sql file which makes this task would be interesting. Possibly artificial Intelligence could help?

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This goes outside of how to use RM but if you have API’s then yes with use of API’s and Sqlite it should be possible – I have only used APIs with Power BI or Power Query/Excel. I have use Sqlite for many purposes with RM – just not combined with API so that is a good question.