Understanding ScribeAI – An Interview with Alon Ehrenfeld

Summary

Family Tree Magazine Podcast
Episode Summary: Understanding ScribeAI – An Interview with Alon Ehrenfeld
Release Date: April 15, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Scribe AI, MyHeritage’s innovative tool for automated transcription, translation, and analysis of historical family documents and photos. Host Andrew Cook interviews Alon Ehrenfeld, Senior Product Manager at MyHeritage and lead creator of Scribe AI, to explore its capabilities, development process, unique features, and the broader philosophy at MyHeritage regarding technology and storytelling in genealogy.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

What is Scribe AI?

• Introduction to the Tool (00:40 – 01:25):

  • Scribe AI automatically transcribes, translates, and interprets historical documents and photos.
  • "You can simply upload an image or use your current images on the MyHeritage Photo Library and it will give you a full, clear transcription, translation if needed, and explain symbols and context. And it will suggest next steps for your research." — Alon Ehrenfeld [00:47]

• Works Across Document Types (01:33 – 01:51):

  • Analyzes records already uploaded by users or found via MyHeritage searches.

Distinctive Features of Scribe AI

• Three Pillars of Difference (02:46 – 05:03):

  • Contextual Analysis: Not just transcribing, but providing historical and situational context.
  • Different Schema for Different Records: Tailored interpretation depending on whether the image is a photo, document, gravestone, or coat of arms.
  • Transparent Reasoning: Explains its reasoning behind each conclusion.
  • "I found a photo of my grandfather Viktor... I just uploaded to Scribe AI and it told me a full story, not specifically about my father, but about the historical context ... It identified his military insignia and... suggested I research more in the British army archive, which I did." — Alon Ehrenfeld [03:20 – 04:20]
  • Scribe AI also suggests research next steps.

• Handling Different Medias (05:23 – 06:29):

  • For photos: Analyzes clothing, background, furniture for clues.
  • For gravestones: Reads inscriptions, suggests possible locations.
  • For coats of arms: Breaks down symbols and heraldry.
  • Referred to as a "powerful AI historian". — Alon Ehrenfeld [06:20]

Real-World Accuracy & Use Cases

• Impressive Detail (06:29 – 07:11):

  • Example: Digital editor uploaded a diner photo. Scribe AI identified the name, cafe’s historical context, and even recognized a Florida license plate from 1965.
  • "It correctly caught just like a snippet of a license plate and said, well, this is consistent with how license plates were designed in Florida in ... 1965. So the level of detail really is impressive." — Andrew Cook [06:50]

• Universality (07:11 – 07:42):

  • Not just for specialists or genealogists—anyone can benefit from these insights.

The Technology Behind Scribe AI

• AI Training & Data (07:42 – 08:52):

  • Uses one of the most advanced large language models (LLMs).
  • Sophisticated, category-specific prompting for media types.
  • "We use a very special prompt for each category ... using very sophisticated prompts to analyze these uploaded images." — Alon Ehrenfeld [08:11]

• Comparison to Photodater Tool (08:52 – 10:31):

  • Ethos is to feed the AI many real examples, so it learns true-to-life historical signals.

Encouraging User Verification

• Explains Its Reasoning (10:31 – 11:06):
  • Offers users the ability to double-check its claims—explains why it identifies, for instance, a particular hat as belonging to a certain decade.
  • "It'll say it's this style, it's this color, it's being worn this way ... we always encourage people to double-check what in any AI tool is giving you." — Andrew Cook [10:35]

Focus on Storytelling and Genealogy Empowerment

• From Data to Story (11:06 – 12:03):
  • Scribe AI transforms a single photo into a full narrative, revealing new aspects of family and broader social history.
  • "One photo can give you a whole new world... it's not just about the research you do, it's about ... learning about the era, the fashion, cars, whatever." — Alon Ehrenfeld [11:15]

---

Innovation Philosophy at MyHeritage

How Features Like Scribe AI Are Developed

• The Hackathon Model (12:03 – 14:06):

  • Scribe AI was conceived at a MyHeritage hackathon—rapid, cross-departmental brainstorming and prototyping.
  • Winning ideas are voted on by staff and, if selected, are further developed for users.
  • "From the morning to evening until late night, we work together in groups ... each group brings an idea and then we present these ideas to all the management ... and there is a vote." — Alon Ehrenfeld [12:35]

• Continuous Idea Generation (14:20 – 15:24):

  • Ideas also emerge from user feedback and product managers doing hands-on research.
  • "We have two other ways ... one is product discovery ... and another way ... is by listening to our users. So users are coming up with a lot of new ideas, and some of them we develop." — Alon Ehrenfeld [14:40]

• Team as Genealogists (15:24 – 16:34):

  • Product managers conduct family research themselves to empathize with user needs.
  • "[For] a product manager at MyHeritage, it’s really important to be ... a genealogist or at least a bit." — Alon Ehrenfeld [15:52]

---

What’s Next for MyHeritage?

Upcoming Tools and Features

• New Releases Preview (16:34 – 17:54):
  • Family Infographics (visual representation of family tree data), seen at RootsTech 2026.
  • AI-driven video projects: Live Tribute, Life Video, Walk of Life—tools that turn family photos and data into multimedia stories.
  • "We are working on a few other AI-driven video concepts such as Live Tribute, Life Video and Walk of Life..." — Alon Ehrenfeld [17:19]

Where to Keep Up with Updates

• Staying Informed (18:19 – 19:06):
  • Company blog: blog.myheritage.com—most recent features, releases, and records.
  • MyHeritage's Legacy Webinars.
  • "You can go to blog.myheritage.com and get the most updated information about new features, new releases, new records that we publish every day almost." — Alon Ehrenfeld [18:22]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Scribe AI's Impact:
  • "The context brings in new information, new story. And my research about my grandfather was just an amazing one. I just couldn't stop uploading more and more content to Scribe AI..." — Alon Ehrenfeld [04:15]
• On Photo Analysis:
  • "If it's a photo, it looks at the historical figures, clothing, the furniture, whatever ... and tells you more about the historical context." — Alon Ehrenfeld [05:41]
• On Community and Brainstorming:
  • "When you sort of sample a wider audience ... you get a lot of ideas that you think, oh, wow, that's just amazing." — Andrew Cook [14:06]
• On Storytelling:
  • "One photo can give you a whole new world ... Not just my family history, but history in general, it seems." — Alon Ehrenfeld [11:18]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• What is Scribe AI? – [00:40–01:25]
• What Makes Scribe Different? – [02:46–05:03]
• Real-world Example: Military Uniform Photo – [03:17–04:40]
• How Scribe Handles Different Media – [05:23–06:29]
• Accuracy Example: Florida Diner Photo – [06:29–07:11]
• How Scribe AI is Trained – [07:42–08:52]
• Comparison to PhotoDater – [08:52–10:31]
• Explaining Its Reasoning – [10:31–11:06]
• Storytelling and Broader Impact – [11:06–12:03]
• Feature Development: Hackathons – [12:20–14:06]
• Product Discovery and Listening to Users – [14:20–15:24]
• Upcoming Features – [16:34–17:54]
• Where to Learn More – [18:19–19:06]

---

Further Resources

• Read more: [Family Tree Magazine article by Catherine (digital editor) with hands-on experiences using Scribe AI]
• Explore new features: blog.myheritage.com
• In-depth learning: MyHeritage’s [Legacy Webinars]

---

Summary by Family Tree Magazine Podcast Editors (April 2026)
Ideal for genealogists and family historians eager to leverage cutting-edge AI for unlocking rich, contextual stories from their family artifacts.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Family Tree Magazine podcast. This is the show from America's number one genealogy magazine. I'm Andrew Cook, editor of Family Tree magazine. As it often does at March's RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City, megawebsite MyHeritage announced several new features. For my money, though, Scribe AI was the most impressive, providing users with the ability to auto transcribe text and record images and receive insights on when, where and why the document or photo was created. Here to talk about Scribe AI is Alon Ehrenfeld, the Senior Product Manager at MyHeritage who was behind its creation. Welcome to the podcast, Alon.

[B]

Thank you, Andrew. Happy to be here.

[A]

So, for our listeners who maybe aren't familiar with the tool, can you give an overview of what Scribe AI is and what it can do?

[B]

Yes. So Scribe AI is a powerful new feature on MyHeritage that basically transcribes, translates and interprets historical family documents and photos. You can simply upload an image or use your current images on the MyHeritage Photo Library and it will give you a full, clear transcription, translation if needed, and explain symbols and context. And it will suggest next steps for your research.

[A]

So not just here's what you're looking at, but also here's how you can use that information.

[B]

Of course, yes.

[A]

And I know you mentioned that it works on photos and documents both that already live in the media library that a user may have uploaded, as well as on stuff that they can upload. It also works on documents on MyHeritage already within their collections, right?

[B]

Yes. So there are two types of documents that are already in MyHeritage that you can use Scribe AI on. One is the ones that you uploaded along the time. It can be family photos, family documents, or whatever you uploaded into the MyHeritage Photo Library, or you can use it on records you find in the MyHeritage search. So you find a record that it's interesting to you and you want to know more about it. Then you can turn on Scribe AI and it will give you a whole new world about this record? It can be triggered either from the record page that you find or a record match that you find. So both ways are also possible.

[A]

And how would you say Scribe AI is different from other auto transcription tools or index indexes, for example?

[B]

So I think there are three pillars that differentiate Scribe AI than other tools. Which one is it provides context. Second it uses different schema for different type types of records and three, it explains its reasoning and I want to tell a story about how I used my. How I used Scribe AI. And then I think it will tell more about the differentiation between other tools and Scribe AI. So I found a photo of my grandfather Viktor from I didn't know when, but with his figure wearing a uniform, I didn't know anything about it and no one in the family knew anything about it. I just uploaded to Scribe AI and it told me a full story, not specifically about my father, but about the historical context of why or why possibly my grandfather was wearing these uniforms. It identified his military insignia and it told me that I can go and research more in the British army archive, which I did. And I found out that my grandfather was an undercover agent during World War II, which just no one knew about it. So this is how the context brings in new information, new story. And my research about my grandfather was just an amazing one. I just couldn't stop uploading more and more content to Scribe AI and to find out more about his story. So this is one example how we combine the context, different schema because the Scribe AI can identify that this is a photo and not a document and give me the specific context and explains the reasoning and gives me suggested next steps on how to proceed my research upon. So this is just an amazing tool.

[A]

I know that's one thing that a lot of AI tools struggle with is context. So that Scribe AI analyzes the document first, decides what it is and then will provide information specifically about that. Sort of like a. If you're searching different record collections, how you'll get served up different fields based on what type of record you're looking for.

[B]

Exactly. So yes, it's basically analyzes what it looks at is a document, a photo, a gravestone, a coat of arms. And based on that it acts, interprets whatever it is, if it's a text, so it transcribes, translates if needed. If it's a photo, it looks at the historical figures, clothing, The furniture, whatever. There is clues in the background of this photo and tells you more about the historical context, gravestones, it looks at the inscription and tells you more about where possibly this gravestone is located and coat of arms. The results are really interesting. It gives you a full analysis of the figures in the coat of arms and things like that. So this tool is powerful AI historian,

[A]

I would say our digital editor, Catherine, she heard about the tool while we were at Rootstech and tried it out and she wrote an article on our website, which I'll link to in the show notes, but she uploaded a photo of I can't remember if she knew who the people in it were or not. But it looked at the background information, it saw they were in front of a diner or something, and it caught the name of the diner. And so this was a really popular hangout in Florida, and it correctly caught just like a snippet of a license plate and said, well, this is consistent with how license plates were designed in Florida in whatever, 1965. So the level of detail really is impressive.

[B]

Yeah, I hear about examples all the time, and each example is unique and interesting, and each one can find the way to relate to the results. So this is what I like. It's like for everyone, not for genealogists, only for researchers only. I think everyone can find the interesting parts and the results you get from Scribe AI.

[A]

For those who know a little something about AI, they'll know that these tools have to be trained on something. They're to sort of feed information into it so they can recognize patterns and then apply that to new information that a user uploads. I know it's probably proprietary, but what can you tell us about how Scribe AI was trained and what data it was trained on? I do.

[B]

So, as you mentioned, I cannot disclose everything, but I can say that we use one of the most powerful LLMs, large language models out there in the market, and we use a very special prompt for each category. So for images, for. For. Sorry, for documents, for photos, for gravestones, and for coat of arms, each of them get a specific treatment with a specific, very sophisticated prompt. This is the beautiful part in it to harness AI in the most powerful way, using very sophisticated prompts to analyze these uploaded images.

[A]

As you're talking, it reminds me of another myheritage tool, the Photodater, where, as I understand it, the tool was fed several thousand photos with known dates and then started to look for. All right, how do these images change over time? How are colors fading? What's the clothing like? So it's applying a lot of real examples that it's using to generate this analysis, which I think is important to know.

[B]

Yes, I think the similarities between the two is the approach we had to these two problems. I would say one problem is to estimate dates of photos that we don't know the date they were taken. And the other one is to uncover information from documents we don't know even what's written in them. But one approach was really, as you mentioned in the photo data, to feed the LLM with as many examples as we can with known photos, known dates of photos, and the other was inscribe AI to get an even more sophisticated LLM into the, into the game to have this power of analysis.

[A]

Yeah, to go back to the three things that you felt makes Grab AI different, that it explains its reasoning. So it won't just say, you know, this hat is from the 19th century or you know, a specific decade. It'll say it's this style, it's this color, it's being worn this way. So makes it easier too for the user to verify themselves, I think, which is always, you know, we always encourage people to double check what in any AI tool is, is. Is giving you.

[B]

Right. And I think this is why, why I like it. As I mentioned from my grandfather uniform photo, what I liked is that there is a full story to tell from a single photo and there is this phrase. I don't know if it's in English, the same, but one photo, 1,000 words. Maybe, maybe it said otherwise, but this is literally like one. One photo can give you a whole new world. So it's not just about the research you do, it's about you. You can learn more about the era, the fashion, cars, whatever the reason, in this photo, you can learn a lot from it. And this is why, why I like Scribe AI. I learned a lot from it. Not just, not just my family history, but history in general, it seems.

[A]

Myheritage in general is focusing on storytelling and the power of that and using technology to do that. And that leads me to my next question, which is how do you and the MyHeritage team come up with new tools and decide which ones you're going to develop and how to prioritize that?

[B]

Thank you. This is a great question. And Scribe AI is really a good example of how we bring new ideas, new features into our users. So we have few ways and Scribe AI was one of the ways. This was a feature made up in a hackathon that we do once a year in myheritage. Hackathon is a condensed, a way of thinking about an idea and bringing it to life within a certain time. We do it in one day. So from the morning to evening until late night, we work together in groups. It can be people working together from the product department, R&D, marketing, sales, customer support, everyone together in groups and each group brings an idea and then we present these ideas to all the management and all myheritage basically and there is a vote. And the features that are the best and win, win the attention, they are the ones chosen usually to be developed and pushed them to users. And Scribe AI was one of them. So the team worked on that 10 months ago, was actually lucky to be the ones that got chosen. And this feature was live thanks to them.

[A]

Sounds like a really fun day. And that you're getting input from people at all levels of the organization, all, you know, different backgrounds. I think you get some really, really interesting ideas that way. When you sort of sample a wider audience, it is.

[B]

And then. And you get a lot of ideas that you, you think, oh, wow, that's, that's just amazing. How did I think about it earlier? And this is amazing. And we actually have two other ways of bringing ideas to, to life in MyHeritage. One is product discovery, as I think every company is doing. So me as a product manager will do my research, will talk to users, brainstorm ideas, see the competitors, and so on, so forth. And then I will bring ideas to our product roadmap. And if this idea is strong enough, both value to users and value to our business, then we will develop it. And another way to do it is by listening to our users. So users are coming up with a lot of new ideas, and some of them we develop.

[A]

I think it can be really helpful too, for people like yourself to also be doing family history research to, you know, not just hear from users what they're experiencing and what their ideas are, but even on our team, as we're doing our own research, wow, we hit this roadblock. And be really nice if someone could write an article like this so that you're able to solve these problems as you come up against them.

[B]

Yeah, I think as product manager at MyHeritage, it's really important to be somehow somewhat a genealogist or at least a bit. So when I joined, I didn't know much about my family, but since then I grew my tree up and added relatives and researched and got into like 10 generations back in my grandfather branch. And this is really interesting. And I agree, if you wear the hat of a genealogist, it's easier for me as a product manager to be a better product manager and bring better products to our users.

[A]

Are there any other upcoming tools that you can share with us? Stuff that you're working on now?

[B]

So, yeah, actually in Roots 2026, Gilad Jafet, our CEO, had a great lecture about existing new features and future features. But I will give you a glance. We're working now on family infographics, which is a visual way to present information from family trees. And if you've been to RootsTech, I think you saw it on our booth this is a really amazing way to showcase your family tree of your closest relatives. I really like it and it's currently in development to be released very soon and we are working on a few other AI driven video concepts such as Live Tribute, Life Video and Walk of Life and you can see more about Those in the MyHeritage blog post that we will attach to this episode and you will see nice examples of how we can tell our family stories and use our family photos and turn them into meaningful visual stories.

[A]

Sounds interesting. And that presentation that Gilad gives every year, definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it yet. I always try to go in person myself or watch the recorded version if I can't, so make sure that's linked to in the show notes as well. Well Alon, thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners and where can they learn more about what MyHeritage has going on?

[B]

Yes, of course. So as a MyHeritage user you will probably get our emails, MyHeritage blog posts and updates if you're subscribed. But you can go to blog.myheritage.com and get the most updated information about new features, new releases, new records that we publish every day almost. This is a great way to learn about MyHeritage. You can also learn more about MyHeritage using the legacy webinars login and we have thousands and thousands of webinars. Very interesting stuff there.

[A]

Great. I look forward to hearing what else comes out of those brainstorming sessions and we'll link to both the MyHeritage Blog and the in depth review that our digital editor Catherine did on Scribe AI. Thank you so much for being here and it's great talking to you.

[B]

Thank you Andrew. Thank you very much.

[A]

Thanks for joining me in this month's episode of the Family Tree Magazine podcast. You can find the show notes from this episode and all [e-mail] podcasts while on our website. You can also sign up for our free email newsletter where you'll receive free genealogy resources each weekday, including links to new podcast episodes as they're released. Until next time, have fun climbing your family tree.

[B]

Sam sa.