Artificial Intelligence in archival and historical scholarship workflow: HTS and ChatGPT

Abstract

This article examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the archival heritage digitization processes, specifically regarding the manuscripts’ automatic transcription, their correction, and normalization. It highlights how digitality has compelled scholars to redefine Archive and History field and has facilitated the accessibility of analogue sources through digitization and integration into big data. The study focuses on two AI systems, namely Transkribus and ChatGPT, which enable efficient analysis and transcription of digitized sources. The article presents a test of ChatGPT, which was utilized to normalize the text of 366 letters stored in the “Correspondence” section of the Biscari Archive (Catania). Although the AI exhibited some limitations that resulted in inaccuracies, the corrected texts met expectations. Overall, the article concludes that digitization and AI can significantly enhance archival and historical research by allowing the analysis of vast amounts of data and the application of computational linguistic tools.