I wrote recently about using Ai to help Transcribing handwritten diary entries into Day One. On the whole this has been a great success but there have been one or two interesting hallucinations.
A Blank Page
Not every page in my diary has a written entry but I have been scanning and transcribing them all for completeness. This is the prompt that I have been giving Google Gemini:
You are an expert palaeographer and archivist. Transcribe the handwritten text from this image.
Crucial: Do not insert a line break at the end of every handwritten line. Instead, join the text into continuous, flowing paragraphs just like standard prose. Only insert a line break (a new paragraph) where the author has clearly started a brand new paragraph block or section in the journal. Preserve original spelling, punctuation, headings, and dates. Do not add any conversational intro/outro filler.
For the most part this has been working well and when it finds a blank page it (usually) gives a response such as this:
There is no handwritten text visible in the provided image. The page appears to be blank, with only pre-printed journal headings present.
November 9th
November 9th 1988 was one of those blank days, as you can see from the image above. However, rather than return a blank response or some text telling me that there was nothing to transcribe I got this entry instead:
I have absolutely no idea how or why Gemini decided to write this and it is certainly factually incorrect: in 1988 I was living on my own so no family to do washing-up for, I don’t drink coffee and certainly don’t eat Marmite!
The moral of this story? Don’t blindly trust Ai!