‘I thought, I’ve tried everything else, why not give AI a shot?’: the long-lost family reunited by ChatGPT
Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?
As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn’t really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn’t really pay any attention to it. “I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories.” But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.
When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a three‑piece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn’t speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. “I didn’t know what to think,” Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. “Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school.”
Unable to communicate with any of the other pupils, Avtar watched what they did and followed along, storing his snow boots in the cloakroom, standing up to sing the Canadian national anthem and God Save the Queen. But with his long hair tied in the topknot often worn by Sikh boys, he stood out. His parents offered to buy him a hockey stick and a pair of ice skates if he agreed to get his hair cut. He learned English. His nickname changed from Titu to the more Canadian “Tito”. He began to blend in.
But Avtar didn’t fit in at home. He was much paler than everyone else – “the white sheep of the family,” he jokes. And they treated him like an outsider, an afterthought. When he was 14, his family went on holiday without him, leaving Avtar home alone for two weeks. He got on well enough with his father, but didn’t gel at all with his mother. “She didn’t have any of the warmth that my grandma had. She absolutely hated me.” She seemed much more like a stepmother than a mother.
That feeling was confirmed when Avtar got married and his grandparents flew over to stay with him and his new wife, Rosey. His grandma “whispered into my wife’s ear” that Avtar was the product of his father’s first marriage. “She didn’t say what my mother’s name was. She just said, ‘Her family was from Africa, and she left the child with us and went back to Africa. She might have gone to live in the UK.’ That’s it.” It didn’t feel right to ask his grandparents for more information: this was clearly a family secret that no one wanted to discuss with Avtar.
When his son was set a school assignment to complete his family tree, Avtar felt emboldened to approach his father. “I said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to tell me at least what my mother’s name was.’” His dad eventually relented: her first name was Savinder. But he would not give Avtar any more information, no matter how many times he asked. “I was stonewalled.” Avtar had no idea why his parents had split up. “All I really understood was that my mother’s family encouraged her to give up custody of me so it would be easier for them to remarry her.”
He thought about his mother constantly. When Rosey was pregnant with their daughter, there were anomalies in some of the antenatal tests, and Rosey and Avtar were referred to a geneticist. Avtar was asked about his parents’ medical history. “I couldn’t tell them anything about my mother’s family history. It hit me right in the heart. That’s when I thought, I’ve got to do something.”
He Googled and Facebooked, but there was almost nothing to go on; Savinder is a fairly common Punjabi Sikh name. In 2009, Avtar flew to London to visit the National Archives at Kew with the hope of finding immigration or marriage records that might lead him to his mother. “I couldn’t find anything at all.” On a later visit to London, he emailed Sunrise Radio, a British Asian station, asking if they could put out an appeal to find his mother, but they told Avtar they don’t do that kind of thing, out of respect for people’s privacy. That gave Avtar pause. “I thought, maybe I should just cool off. If my mother has some other family, I don’t want to disrupt her life.” Still, it niggled. Three or four years ago, he asked a British south Asian work colleague for advice; she suggested contacting the ITV show Long Lost Family. He watched a few episodes and decided it wasn’t for him. But he longed to know his mother. “The thought of her did not leave my mind, ever.”
The one thing Avtar did not do was a DNA test. He is retired now, but he used to be a chartered accountant, and he knows enough about technology, data and privacy to be wary of giving up his genetic code to a corporation. “They can sell it. Not only that – if they see something in my DNA, that affects my kids. I don’t want that information up there.” He deactivated his Facebook account 12 years ago for similar reasons. “I don’t have faith that these companies have the proper safeguards.”
Then, on 8 May this year, Avtar and Rosey were on holiday in the south of France. Avtar had been battling cancer; their long-awaited trip to Europe came after he had finished his treatment. “It was early morning, and I had read all the news. I was bored. I had nothing else to do. I thought, I’ve tried Google and everything else, why don’t I give AI a shot?”
He typed a prompt into ChatGPT, based on the little he knew, and what else he could infer. He assumed that his mother would be around the same age as his father (who died 10 years ago); he knew that Sikh women of her generation were generally given the middle name Kaur.
Avtar Can you find any information about a Savinder Kaur?
Avtar She would be between 87 and 97 years old and would have lived in India and Africa and possibly in the UK
ChatGPT The strongest match, based upon your clues, is this …
ChatGPT Savinder Kaur Nagi, born in 1936 in Kisumu, Kenya, to Indian Sikh parents.
ChatGPT The article mentions family roots near Jammu and Kashmir in India and later migration connections to the UK.
“I know that AI can just make up shit. So I thought, OK, that’s nice says Avtar. “But it actually referenced an article. I thought, I’ll look at that, at least. Just to see.”
“I wrote it out of grief,” Nicci Dhamu tells me, in a cafe in west London. “Mummy never really had a voice, and that article was all about giving her one. I wanted to create a digital legacy for my mum.”
Nicci is the jewellery designer behind the brand Sohavi. “Sohavi means beautiful in Gurmukhī, the Sikh script. I learned about making things beautiful from Mum.” Her article, published on both the Sohavi blog and the South Asian Heritage Month website, was a celebration of her mother’s creativity. “She suffered loss, and decisions were made for her when she young and wasn’t able to assert her own voice, like many south Asian women of her generation. But she lives on through me and the profound influences she had on me throughout my life,” Nicci wrote.
Savinder Kaur Nagi died in her sleep in December 2024, aged 88. For the last five years of her life, she had dementia. Nicci, 58, had been her carer; they lived together and were very close. Nicci’s family moved to the UK from Kenya in 1973. She has an older sister and a younger brother, as well as three half-sisters from her dad’s first marriage; he was widowed before he met Savinder. “We grew up as one family. I didn’t know until I was about 10 or 11 years old that my sisters were my half‑sisters, and that was only because one of my sisters told me.” Theirs was a family that did not speak about the past.
“I remember once, Mum was in the kitchen making roti, and I asked her, ‘Mummy, you were, like, 25 years old when you got married to Dad. Wasn’t that a little old for somebody of your generation?’ I knew that something was different about our family, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to label it. My father never spoke to us about his wife who had died, and my mum never spoke about her life before him.”
When Nicci was in her 40s, an older cousin casually revealed that Savinder had been married to another man before she met Nicci’s dad. “She was married off, very young. And it probably wasn’t what she wanted,” Nicci tells me. “My grandfather took her and her sisters out of school in Kenya and took them back to Punjab to a place called Dhariwal, just outside Amritsar.” Later in life, her mother would openly lament leaving school – she could read and write English, and loved studying – but never explained why she had been forced to give up her education. She did not discuss her first marriage. She never told her children they had an older half-brother.
“My cousin told me in that conversation that she had a son.” Nicci’s eyes are bright at the memory. But she never felt able to ask her mother about him. “I couldn’t. There was intrinsic pain there.”
There were times, Nicci says, when her mother would sink into a depression. “She would sit quietly, or take to bed because she was upset.” Nicci would bring Savinder her dinner, and encourage her to sit up and eat. “Towards the end of Mum’s life, she used to cry, ‘Mera bacha’ [‘My child’, in Punjabi]. The dementia was bringing up all these memories for her.”
It was then – a couple of years before her mum’s death – that Nicci resolved to find the child her mother was crying for. But she did not know his name, and her mother was unwell so Nicci couldn’t ask her. Instead, she turned to her wider family.
She began with her mother’s young brother, who lives in Birmingham. “He knew my mum’s child as a two- or three-year-old,” Nicci says. She picked his brains, and also her cousins’. She learned that her mother’s first husband was called Mohan Singh, a very educated man who taught at the Sri Guru Ramdas Khalsa school in Amritsar. Mohan’s father had been a police officer, and “quite a difficult man”. Savinder had told her father that her husband wasn’t treating her well. “I think my grandad thought, this is not a good place for my daughter to be. He went around and took his daughter back to his home, and she must have picked up her little boy, too.”
Her mother raised the boy until he was three years old, Nicci was told. “As someone who is also divorced, I often reflect on the stigma my mother may have faced as a south Asian woman of her generation,” she tells me. “I think there was a lot of pressure from the family: let’s get her married. Somebody as young as her was going to have a very difficult life as a single mother. She was too young to be on her own. Her son’s family wanted him back. So they must have taken the child from her.”
Savinder returned to Kenya, alone. At first, she stayed with her eldest brother. Nicci’s cousins have vivid memories of her time in their home. “She would take his baby clothes out and cry. She never forgot him.” She was soon introduced to Nicci’s father, a man 16 years her senior. “I think she carried that trauma throughout her life, but did a very good job of holding her head up high, making her life work, raising three more children.” Family in Kenya heard “through the grapevine” that Savinder’s first husband had moved to Canada, but they couldn’t tell Nicci when. And no one knew the name of Savinder’s little boy. They only knew his nickname: Titu.
“No one’s going to call themselves Titu on LinkedIn, are they?” says Nicci with a deep laugh. That didn’t stop her trying to find him online, and his father and grandfather, too, Googling the names of teachers and police officers in Amritsar. “I didn’t capture anything. How do you find somebody without a name? It’s impossible.”
Three or four months before her mother died, she submitted Savinder’s DNA to Ancestry.com. “I set up a profile for her, saying, ‘Profile managed by daughter, looking for her son, name is Titu, possibly living in Canada.’” She got some interesting titbits back about her mother’s ancestral roots in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, which would explain her light complexion, but no useful matches.
A month after her mother died, Nicci contacted friends who knew people who had worked for the magistrates court in Amritsar, in the hope of finding records of the divorce. “If there were divorce papers, there would be names – and maybe a child’s name.” But she was told that would be virtually impossible; a needle in a haystack.
In April 2025, Nicci’s family took Savinder’s ashes to India. During her stay in Amritsar, Nicci hired a driver to take her to Sri Guru Ramdas Khalsa school, where Titu’s father had been a teacher. She spoke to the teachers and the security guard, but it was long after Mohan Singh’s time there, so no one knew of him or his son. All she wanted was a name for her half-brother, but no one could tell her. It felt hopeless.
“I remember sitting there thinking, why doesn’t he just knock on the door? I knew that his father was an educated man – I was pretty sure that he must be educated, too. Why isn’t he looking for Mum?”
***
Avtar blinked at the article ChatGPT had presented to him. Rosey was just waking up. He made her a coffee and showed her what he’d found, but she wasn’t convinced. After all, the article didn’t mention Savinder’s first marriage, divorce or long-lost son. “Rosey didn’t want me to be disappointed – she knows how hard I had looked for my mother.”
Then he looked at the article again, and a picture stopped him in his tracks: not one of the many photos Nicci had posted of her mother – there was no flicker of instant recognition when he saw Savinder’s face – but an image of a certificate her mother had earned for dressmaking at a college in Dhariwal, just outside Amritsar, in 1962. (“She was so proud of it,” Nicci beams. “She would talk about it quite often: ‘I went to college, I earned a certificate.’ I think that was her quiet victory.”)
“This is two or three years after I was born, and it is in the exact city where I was born.” Avtar exhales deeply, as if he still can’t believe what he saw. He had to find out more. “This is the closest I’ve ever come. It would be a shame to just stop here.”
At 8.36am that morning, he sent Nicci an email, thanking her for writing the tribute to her mother.
Avtar What especially resonated with me was the part of her life connected to India. Reading about her journey raised many personal questions and reflections for me, and I found myself feeling there may be some distant family or community connections between us.
Avtar I want to assure you that I am not reaching out for any business, financial, or other formal reason, only in the spirit of a friendly conversation.
Nicci had spent the previous night praying at the gurdwara and watching Long Lost Family on TV. Avtar’s email had arrived on the morning of what would have been her mother’s 90th birthday. “It was wild!” Nicci exclaims. “I just had a real sense of knowing. I can’t explain it. This is my mum’s son. It’s got to be.”
She agonised over how to reply, eventually adopting a similarly friendly but respectful tone.
Nicci I am equally intrigued to know if there might be a family connection. I would be happy to have a conversation with you.
Her phone number was in her email signature. Avtar sent her a message on WhatsApp as soon as he saw it, asking when they could speak. Nicci scrutinised his WhatsApp profile picture. “He had a very distinctive nose. Everybody in my mother’s family has this prominent, distinguished nose.” She messaged back – she was free to talk there and then.
It was barely two hours since Avtar had typed his prompt into ChatGPT. He was driving with Rosey to get some croissants for breakfast. He parked up, clicked on Nicci’s number and called her. There wasn’t much of a preamble. Avtar was too eager to have his questions finally answered.
Avtar Good morning! This is Avtar Singh
Nicci Hello Avtar
Avtar Hi
Nicci So you live in Canada
Avtar When Is a good time to talk
Nicci I’m London based. As you probably know.
Nicci I’m free to talk now
Avtar 📞 Voice call
“Can you tell me a bit about your mother’s time in India?” he asked.
“Mummy was married and divorced in India,” Nicci replied.
“Did she have any children?”
“Yes,” Nicci said. “She had a son.”
Both Avtar and Rosey burst into tears.
“Titu, is that you?” asked Nicci. “Are you Titu, my mother’s son?”
“Yes,” Avtar replied. “That’s who I am. But I haven’t heard anyone pronounce my nickname that way since my grandma called me that, when I was a little boy.”
“At that moment, time just froze,” Avtar remembers. “But I quickly recovered. I said, ‘You’re my sister. Holy shit – are there more of you out there?’ It had never occurred to me that my mother would have a family, and that I could actually meet them. That family, they knew about me – everybody knew about me, they just wouldn’t talk about it – but I had no knowledge about them whatsoever.”
They spoke for two hours in that first phone call, until Avtar’s battery started to die. Nicci had assumed he must be in Canada; she couldn’t believe he was in France, so close by. “Why don’t you fly over?” she asked. Avtar’s head was spinning. They agreed to speak again later that evening, in a video call.
Avtar This was a dream of a lifetime!
Nicci then gave Avtar a tour of the family photos displayed in the living room she used to share with their mother. “I was just sharing everything I could with him. And sobbing. And remembering Mum. All that grief about her yearning to see him again, and not meeting him. It’s like the universe just flung something at me – although I’ve lost my mum, I’ve gained a brother.”
When Avtar told his son the news, he urged him to go to London and meet his newfound family. By the time he reached his daughter, she already knew: she had been using Avtar’s ChatGPT account and had seen his search history. “She said to me, ‘Dad, if you do not go see her now, you’re going to come back home and that’s all you’re going to think about. So go now.’”
Within days, Avtar and Rosey were in London. Nicci shows me a picture of the first time they met, at a hotel near Heathrow. Their faces are flushed with joy. “I could see the raw emotion in her – she had been looking for me for so long,” Avtar says. “When I met her and hugged her tight, I thought, yes, this is my sister.” They went out for dinner and compared stories and timelines, piecing together the fragments that their families had given them.
The following morning, Nicci took Avtar and Rosey to Birmingham, to meet their mother’s last-surviving sibling – their uncle – who had once shared a home with baby Titu. “He looked at me and said, ‘I remember you. I held you in my arms,’” Avtar tells me, his eyes awash with tears. “It was a great, great visit.”
The next day, Avtar was introduced to his half‑brother – Nicci’s youngest sibling. He had been shocked when Nicci first told him she had found Avtar. “He said, ‘But I’m Mummy’s son,’” Nicci tells me, laughing. “I said, ‘Of course you are. Nothing’s going to change our family.’ When they finally met, Nicci says her younger brother shook Avtar’s hand. “I just knew it was going to be all right. My brother said, ‘I’ve always wanted a big brother.’”
Avtar and Nicci both tell me they have no plans to confirm their relationship with a DNA test. There’s no need, they say.
“I just know,” Nicci tells me.
“This world has a few billion people in it. And if somebody can randomly call me Titu … ” Avtar shakes his head. “I don’t think I need any more verification than that.”
The joy at finally finding Titu is bittersweet for Nicci, because it came too late for her mother. “My biggest regret is that I didn’t talk to her about her son and let her cry about him, let her have a release,” she tells me. “It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anything that she did wrong. It just was a marriage that broke down.”
“I grew up believing that she gave me up because it was the best thing to help her move on with her life. I was OK with that. I thought, I hope that she had a good life. I’m not the type of person to grieve or feel bad that I got abandoned or anything like that,” Avtar says. “Now I’ve heard from Nicci and other people in the family that my mum used to cry for me. That’s all I need to hear. It just feels so good to know that I was loved.”
Plus, Avtar adds, there is “the treasure my mother left behind for me – I have all this family to get to know”. Word about Avtar is slowly spreading across the globe. He’s in a WhatsApp group for his maternal family, including cousins based in Kenya; they have seen each other on FaceTime. There’s discussion of a trip to Kenya so Avtar can meet them in the flesh, and see where Savinder once lived.
“My cousins are so excited to meet him. He looks like them – same smiles, bald and bearded,” Nicci says with another throaty laugh. She whips out her phone to show me an AI-generated image Avtar has made of himself arm in arm with two cousins he’s yet to meet in person. Technology is bringing Savinder’s family together in ways she could never have envisaged, or even imagined.
“We had a video call last night,” Nicci says. “Every time I see him, I look at him and I just want to cry. That’s my brother. It’s so natural to want to have him in our lives.” She pauses. “Who would have thought that life would unfold in this way? That ChatGPT would find an article that would lead to an email that would lead to all of this? Technology seems to be in alignment, in the same way that stars can be sometimes. There is a human touch to AI – look what happened.”
Her half-brother sees things differently. “Right now, AI is still a glorified search engine. It is a piece of software that recognises a pattern in a string of characters, and it can look at millions of responses that match that character set and give you the highest probability best answer. What did it do? It looked at a couple of character strings that I typed in and found the best match. There’s no intelligence there.”
Avtar remains as sceptical as ever about giving big tech his data, even though it was ChatGPT’s readiness to scrape blogs and give out personal information that led him to his maternal family. Had Avtar chosen to ask another AI, he might not have found Nicci at all. When he came back to Canada, he put the same prompt into Anthropic’s Claude, to see what it would say, just for fun. “It replied, ‘We don’t want to infringe on anybody’s privacy, so we don’t give out that information,” Avtar tells me. Then he shrugs. “I think that’s a good response.”