A while back, another blogger tried out Chat GPT’s capability to write out a biographical sketch of himself and commented how (scarily) well AI did so, out of curiosity, I thought I would try it myself.
My prompt was to write a biographical sketch about myself and provided my maiden and married surnames. I thought AI might also do a good job for me since I’ve written a lot about my life growing up and as a genealogist. WRONG!
Here is what appeared:
First, this is a bulleted list, which would be easy enough to correct if the details were right, but they aren’t, by a long shot.
What’s wrong?
- Birth date
- I have absolutely no ability to move to music, aka dancing.
- I didn’t write the above mentioned books.
- I don’t live alone.
- I don’t find solace in photography.
- There was no Shakespeare fiasco.
- Most importantly, I didn’t pass away five years ago!!!
- With all the inaccuracies, the summary is wrong, too.
About the only correct items are where I went to high school and my Blogging Ventures.
For those who are enamored of AI-generated writing, fiction is fine, but if you are expecting AI to create historically accurate articles about real people, living or dead, be sure to proofread carefully before sharing or AI’s lies will reproduce faster than those crazy online trees.
Ouch, not ready for prime-time by a long shot. So wrong!
Thank you for posting this!!! Such a clear example of why AI bots are NOT reliable in any way, shape, or form. My husband terms the as glorified search engines and it’s clear from your “bio” that this exactly the case – ChatGPT just searched for Linda Sabo and amalgamated all the results into one summary, ignoring the fact those results were for several completely different people.
Even doing this for an ancestor could have the same results.
I asked ChatGPT to write a bio sketch about you:
Absolutely. I found a substantial amount of material written by Linda herself, which makes it possible to write something more personal than a simple genealogy résumé. I’ve treated the sketch as a family-history biography, emphasizing her life, interests, research philosophy, and contributions to genealogy.
# Linda Anne (Sabo) Stufflebean
Linda Anne (Sabo) Stufflebean is a dedicated family historian, genealogist, writer, teacher, and keeper of family memories. She has been researching her family history since 1979, beginning long before the Internet transformed genealogy. Over more than four decades, genealogy has developed from an interest into a defining part of her life. As she has put it herself, she is something of a “genealogy addict,” and her continuing work demonstrates just how appropriate that description is. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][1])
Linda was born into a family with both immigrant and old New England roots. She is the daughter of George Michael Sabo and Doris Priscilla Adams. Her Sabo ancestry reaches into the Carpatho-Rusyn community of what is now Slovakia, while her Adams ancestry includes deep New England roots. Her paternal grandparents, George Kucharik, also known as George R. Sabo, and Julia Scerbak Sabo, were part of the Slovak/Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant community in Passaic, New Jersey. Linda has preserved many memories and photographs of this family, including photographs of her grandparents and their friends and relatives. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][2])
Her childhood was spent in Passaic, New Jersey, a community she remembers as a diverse immigrant neighborhood. Her recollections of growing up there in the 1950s and early 1960s provide an unusually vivid picture of everyday family life in mid-twentieth-century America. She has written about her neighborhood, school days, church experiences, family routines, Christmases, summer vacations, and the people who populated her childhood world. In one series of reminiscences, she deliberately set out to record the details of her youth for her own children, recognizing that family historians sometimes concentrate so heavily on their ancestors that they forget that their own lives will someday become family history. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][3])
Linda graduated from Wayne Valley High School in New Jersey with the class of 1970. ([AlumniClass][4]) She later became a special education teacher, a profession that suited her interest in helping people learn and in approaching problems patiently and systematically. After retiring from teaching, she continued to apply those skills to genealogy. Her background as an educator also influenced the way she approaches genealogy education: she has taught local genealogy groups and has spent many years helping others learn how to research their families. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][5])
Her genealogy has never been limited to collecting names and dates. Linda is particularly interested in discovering the stories behind the people in her family tree. She has visited courthouses, libraries, archives, cemeteries, and other repositories in search of evidence about her ancestors. When conventional research reaches a dead end, she is willing to look for another path—what she calls thinking “outside the box.” That philosophy became one of the central themes of her genealogy writing. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][1])
In 2014, Linda began publishing **Empty Branches on the Family Tree**, a genealogy and family-history blog that became the principal outlet for her research, discoveries, memories, and research methods. Through the years she has written extensively about the Sabo, Kucharik, Scerbak, Stufflebean, Adams, Tarbox, Coleman, Sturgell, and other family lines. Her blog combines traditional genealogical research with personal storytelling, making it useful both as a record of her own family and as a source of ideas for other researchers. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][6])
A particularly important part of Linda’s research has been her investigation of her Carpatho-Rusyn and Slovak ancestry. The Sabo family presents the kinds of challenges that can frustrate even experienced genealogists: changing surnames, alternate spellings, immigrant records, limited surviving church records, and families whose lives crossed international boundaries. Linda has written extensively about the Kucharik/Sabo family and about her grandmother Julia Scerbak Sabo’s social world in the Slovak community of Passaic. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][7])
She has also pursued difficult New England and colonial-era problems. Her research into the Lakin, Boyden, Scripture, Bucknam, Tarbox, Adams, and related families illustrates her willingness to tackle questions for which the surviving evidence is incomplete. In one published case study, she examined the identity of Lucy, wife of Josiah Lakin, and presented the evidence supporting her identification as Lucy Boyden while acknowledging the limitations of the surviving records. That combination of enthusiasm and caution is characteristic of her research style. ([RootsFinder][8])
Linda has a particular appreciation for the social and cultural context surrounding her ancestors. She recognizes that knowing an ancestor’s name, date, and place is only the beginning. Understanding the community, religion, immigration experience, occupations, economic circumstances, and relationships surrounding an individual can transform a bare genealogy into a meaningful family story. Her writings about her Slovak ancestors, for example, frequently explore the immigrant community in which they lived rather than treating them simply as names on a pedigree chart. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][9])
Preserving family history is another important part of Linda’s work. She has undertaken major efforts to organize and digitize family photographs and other historical materials. At one point she described herself as the caretaker of roughly 10,000 archival items and discussed her efforts to digitize them and organize her digital collection so that the next generation would be able to understand and use it. She has also written about the responsibility of preserving photographs of relatives who have no descendants of their own. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][10])
Linda’s interests extend beyond genealogy. She has enjoyed quilting and has written about making a quilt from her son’s baby clothes, demonstrating the same interest in preserving family memories that characterizes her genealogical work. She has also written extensively about childhood memories, family traditions, photographs, heirlooms, and the ordinary experiences that give family history its human dimension. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][11])
Her research has also connected her with a much larger community of genealogists. She shares discoveries, recommends useful resources, discusses research problems, and highlights the work of other family historians. She has participated in genealogy education and conferences and has become a familiar name among genealogy bloggers and researchers. Her work has been featured in genealogy publications and guest-blogging projects, including a “How I Solved It” case study describing one of her difficult research problems. ([RootsFinder][8])
Linda’s genealogical heritage reaches unusually far back. Through her Adams line she has documented descent from early New England families and has investigated Loyalist and colonial connections. In 1982 she received a Loyalist certificate recognizing her descent from John Adams, a Loyalist ancestor. ([UELAC][12]) Her research therefore spans a remarkable range—from European immigrant families arriving in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to colonial New England families whose lives can be traced into the seventeenth century.
In recent years, Linda has continued to adapt her research to new technologies while retaining the traditional values of careful genealogical research. She uses genealogy software and online databases, but she remains conscious of the importance of original records, sound evidence, documentation, and preservation. In 2026 she experimented with artificial intelligence to help develop a genealogy research plan, while making clear that human judgment and review remain essential. Her approach is characteristic of someone who began researching “before the Internet” but has been willing to learn and adopt new tools as they become useful. ([Empty Branches on the Family Tree][6])
Perhaps the most important feature of Linda Stufflebean’s genealogical life is that she sees family history as something to be **preserved and shared**, not merely researched. Her blog, photographs, stories, research notes, teaching, and years of investigation all contribute to that larger purpose. She has spent more than forty-five years searching for the people who came before her, documenting their lives, solving their mysteries, and recording the memories of those she actually knew.
Linda Anne (Sabo) Stufflebean’s family tree may contain many branches, but her life’s work has been devoted to making sure that none of those branches remain empty.
I based this on Linda’s own published autobiographical material and genealogy writings, rather than filling gaps with unsourced biographical details. If you’d like, I can also turn this into a **more personal “family historian’s tribute” version**, written as though *you* are writing about Linda for your own genealogy blog or family-history book.
[1]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/about/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “About Me | Empty Branches on the Family Tree”
[2]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2014/11/george-kucharik-aka-george-r-sabo/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “George Kucharik aka George R. Sabo | Empty Branches on the Family Tree”
[3]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2015/11/a-week-in-the-life-my-childhood-memories-part-1/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Life in Passaic, Circa 1960, Part 1 | Empty Branches on the Family Tree”
[4]: https://www.alumniclass.com/wayne-valley-high-school-nj/profile/linda-sabo/9699320/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Linda Stufflebean Class of 1970 Alumni – Wayne Valley High School NJ”
[5]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/page/1410/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Empty Branches on the Family Tree | Genealogy Tips & Family History | Page 1410”
[6]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/author/lstufearthlink-net/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Linda Stufflebean | Empty Branches on the Family Tree”
[7]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/category/sabo/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Sabo | Empty Branches on the Family Tree”
[8]: https://www.rootsfinder.com/blog/solved-lucy-wife-josiah-lakin-groton-massachusetts/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “How I Solved It: Who was Lucy, Wife of Josiah Lakin, Groton, Massachusetts? – RootsFinder”
[9]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/category/sabo/page/3/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Sabo | Empty Branches on the Family Tree | Page 3”
[10]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/tag/genealogy-go-over/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Genealogy Go-Over | Empty Branches on the Family Tree”
[11]: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2020/08/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “August | 2020 | Empty Branches on the Family Tree”
[12]: https://www.uelac.org/uelondon/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Certificates-Issued-to-2015-10-31-All.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Loyalist Certificates Issued – to October 31, 2015”
Thank you for the updated biography, which is much more accurate. I think the difference may be due to the fact that I wrote this post months ago and AI has continued its fast evolution.
Wow, what a difference between your AI summary and Randy’s. AI is just not reliable enough yet. But it also depends on the prompt and explaining clearly your expectations.
I did the same thing and only provided my full married name nee maiden name and the first response I got “I don’t have enough verified personal information to write a genuinely complete life biography without inventing details.”
What a difference. I eventually gave it my birth year but nothing else. The response was more about my blogging and memberships in DAR and Mayflower.