Artificial intelligence has made impressive advances in recent years, and it can be a useful tool when working with historical documents, including old German handwriting styles such as Kurrentschrift. Used carefully and transparently, AI can support human expertise. However, it is not yet a replacement for skilled, human-led transcription and translation.
Where AI Can Be Helpful for Kurrentschrift transcription
With a client’s consent, I may use AI tools selectively to support my work. For example, AI can sometimes be helpful for suggesting likely place names or surnames based on partial or unclear readings, checking historical context, dates, or references, as well as identifying common collocations or phrases in older forms of German.
There is also specialist software designed specifically for handwriting recognition, such as Transkribus, which has been developed for archival and academic use (I do not currently use Transkribus in my own workflow, however).
Why AI Has Limits with Old German Handwriting
Old German handwriting is not standardised: every writer had their own habits, shortcuts, and inconsistencies, and these often changed over time. For AI systems, particularly those trained on modern handwriting styles, this presents a major challenge.
To work reliably, handwriting recognition software typically requires large volumes of writing by the same individual, along with carefully prepared training data and consistent handwriting styles.
In practice, very few private clients have archives large enough to make this worthwhile. A handful of letters, diaries, or documents (which is what most people bring to me) simply does not provide enough data for AI to learn a specific person’s handwriting accurately. Given that Kurrentschrift and its derivatives are not used any more, AI therefore tends to struggle with accurate transcription, often misreading even common words. These errors are not always obvious to someone who does not read German.
Below, I include an example of a letter fragment from 1944. I asked ChatGPT to transcribe it by uploading the image, giving a very basic prompt. You can see that first of all it thought it was in English. I then prompted it that it was in German, and it recognised it as a type of Kurrentschrift, but it was still completely inaccurate. At the bottom I include my transcription that I did myself.
It is clear that it is not currently a viable option to upload an image of Kurrentschrift to AI and have it transcribe it accurately. Specialist software like Transkribus will cope much better – but you’ll need expertise in reading Kurrentschrift first to make use of it. Think of AI as a means of speeding up what humans can already do. AI is not the enemy – it can be a really useful tool, but, as for most things, it is best used as an aid for human intelligence rather than as a replacement.
