In the last week, tens of thousands of pages of classified documents concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 were declassified and released to the public, giving scholars and citizens the opportunity to better understand the historical impact of that event. The dump of information, however, has presented researchers with a challenge that AI-powered automation is helping with.
The vast collection of data is unindexed, with no text layer—making it extremely difficult to search. Intelligent automation technology provider ABBYY has stepped in to help facilitate research into these files. The company has leveraged its expertise in optical character recognition and created a searchable version of the JFK assassination files to make reviewing the enormous cache of documents easier, according to Max Vermeir, Senior Director of AI Strategy at ABBYY.
“We are providing the JFK files as fully searchable, structured PDFs, freely available for the open-source community,” said Vermeir. “By making these documents machine-readable, we aim to unlock deeper insights, accelerate historical research, and enable advanced AI-driven analysis.”
Other features of the files ABBYY has made available include the ability to:
- Perform full-text search, enabling users to instantly locate key events, names, and places across thousands of pages.
- Build AI-powered Research Tools – Leverage Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to create AI assistants that can answer JFK-related questions.
- Run NLP & Machine Learning Analysis – Detect patterns, extract key insights, and apply entity recognition to map relationships.
- Enhance Historical Investigations – Cross-reference details, analyze declassified records, and uncover new connections.