AI is a substantial part of how Vernacular History is made. We want you to know that before you read, watch or contribute.
Where AI is used
- Writing and research assistance: AI helps draft video scripts, articles, summaries, titles, quizzes and descriptions. Our production tools use Claude and can also use ChatGPT or other configured models.
- Translation and adaptation: AI translates and adapts material for Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and other supported languages. Translations can contain mistakes in meaning, spelling, names or cultural context.
- Illustrations: AI creates many of the pictures used in our videos, including historical reconstructions and thumbnail artwork. Image-generation prompts are also AI-assisted. A convincing picture is not proof that a scene happened or looked exactly that way.
- Narration: Videos use synthetic text-to-speech voices. A narrator’s voice is not evidence of a human presenter or an eyewitness account. The voice engine can vary between productions.
- Website and production software: AI coding assistants help build and maintain this website and the tools that produce our content.
The exact tools may change. We do not claim that a specific model has individually verified the facts in an article or video.
What the pictures mean
An AI illustration is a reconstruction, not an archival photograph, a recovered painting, or a primary source. AI can invent clothing, buildings, inscriptions and other details, even when a prompt asks for historical accuracy.
Our articles use credited historical or documentary images where available. Look for the image caption, creator, licence and source link. Those credits distinguish sourced material from the illustrations used in videos. Our supplied brand and language emblems are branding, not historical evidence.
AI can be wrong
AI can invent references, misread a source, flatten disagreement, or present an uncertain claim with confidence. It can also produce poor pronunciation and misleading translations. Do not assume that every AI-generated sentence has received an individual human fact-check.
The source links in a story are a starting point for checking its claims, not a guarantee that every detail is correct. Where history is contested, the distinction between evidence, interpretation and later tradition matters.
Responsibility and corrections
The use of AI does not remove our responsibility for what we publish. We aim to correct errors and improve clarity when readers identify a problem. If you find a factual mistake, misleading image, invented reference, translation problem or pronunciation error, please send a correction or source. Include the story or video link and a source we can examine.
Your contributions
Reactions are stored as browser-based signals without public voter identities. Story and source suggestions go to a private editorial queue and are not automatically published. The website does not send your reactions, saved reading list or suggestion-form submissions to an AI model automatically. If we introduce AI processing of community submissions, this policy will need to be updated first.
Read our community and data notice for what stays on your device, what reaches our server, and how suggestions are retained.