A Bengaluru-based Amazon executive has gone viral after sharing how he used an AI assistant to trace and digitally map his ancestral family land in rural Uttar Pradesh.
Zahid Khan, Director and GM (New Shopping Experiences) at Amazon Bengaluru, described the experience in a detailed LinkedIn post, calling it one of the most meaningful uses of artificial intelligence in his personal life.
Khan said the land belonged to his great-grandfather and was later inherited by his father before passing down to him. However, having visited the village only a few times, he had little knowledge about the exact location of the property.
AI helped decode complex land records
According to Khan, the land records were already digitised across multiple government portals but were written in highly technical legal Hindi, making them difficult to understand and navigate manually.
After hearing recommendations about Anthropic’s Claude AI assistant, he decided to use its “computer use” feature to simplify the process.
Khan explained that the AI searched government databases using his father’s name typed in Hindi, identified relevant plots, extracted land details and mapped the locations accurately.
The AI system also recognised that the maps used Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates instead of standard latitude and longitude formats. It later converted the data, generated a KML file and uploaded it to Google My Maps, creating a GPS-routable map of the ancestral land.
Social media praises practical AI use
Khan jokingly remarked that the project pushed him from Claude’s free plan to its paid Pro and Max subscriptions.
His post quickly gained attention online, with many users describing it as one of the most practical and emotionally meaningful applications of AI technology.
Several users also pointed out how AI could help ordinary citizens navigate complex government systems and access digitised public records more efficiently in the future.