Hurricane Katrina inspires Lakewood Ranch man to build AI app to preserve family history

LAKEWOOD RANCH, Fla. - A Lakewood Ranch creator turned deep family loss into a high-tech legacy preservation tool, building an artificial intelligence app designed to capture personal histories before they vanish.

After Hurricane Katrina

The backstory:

When Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi in 2005, Mike O'Donnell's parents lost their retirement home in Pass Christian. The storm also destroyed three generations of family photo albums, home movies and other memories O'Donnell hoped his children would someday see.

"I was heartbroken. I'm like, that was for my kids to see one day," he said.

Preserving oral histories

Local perspective:

O'Donnell began reaching out to relatives and family friends for old photographs. 

As he collected them, he realized the pictures often came with stories that had never been written down and were instead passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth.

That experience eventually inspired O'Donnell to create Leaves: Times of My Life, an app that uses AI to help people record and preserve those stories.

How the app works

What you can do:

Users can choose from more than 100 life story topics and answer questions from a virtual biographer by typing or speaking into their phone. 

The app can then generate a written version of the story and incorporate photos or videos.

Safeguarding user privacy

Dig deeper:

O'Donnell acknowledged that some storytellers worry about submitting sensitive personal histories to automated platforms. He noted the virtual biographer operates under strict parameters to guarantee privacy.

"So, the virtual biographer is told to ask questions on a specific topic. Then it only writes the story and then zero data retention, it retains no data of its own."

The free Times of My Life service connects to the Family Heritage Hub platform, which lets families narrate pictures, store documents and leave messages. 

Optional paid tiers convert narratives into high-resolution videos or generate custom voice audio casts.

The Source: The information in this story was gathered from an interview and statement details provided by Leaves creator Mike O'Donnell, who explained how his family experience during Hurricane Katrina prompted the platform's development, as well as platform information on leaves.us.