The Best Uses of AI for Genealogists

This webinar from the Legacy Family Tree Webinars AI series offers a practical, forward-looking tour of how artificial intelligence can support (and sometimes complicate) real genealogical work. Presented by Steve Little and Mark Thompson and hosted by Marian Pierre-Louis, the session reviews what AI already does reliably for family historians, highlights the capabilities that made 2025 a turning point, and previews how 2026 may reshape everyday research workflows. The discussion is especially relevant for genealogists who want to work faster and more creatively—without sacrificing standards of proof, source awareness, or ethical responsibility.

• The “core four” uses still anchor success—now with bigger reach. Summarization, extraction, generation, and translation remain the most dependable strengths of AI, with repeated emphasis on a critical practice: verify everything. The webinar adds nuance by showing how today’s tools can handle larger volumes of text and more complex queries than even a year ago, making them more useful for long documents and multi-source projects.

• Research workflows are shifting from copy-paste to context-aware tools. Internet-connected “deep research” features and source-grounded notebook tools are framed as a major leap: instead of relying on what a model “remembers,” AI can increasingly gather, synthesize, and present findings with links back to sources. The webinar also highlights a growing trend toward AI-assisted browsing—summarizing what is on-screen, comparing multiple tabs, and accelerating the early stages of investigation.

• Images, handwriting, and structured data analysis are moving from novelty to utility—if used responsibly. High-quality image generation and restoration can bring narratives to life, but the speakers stress the risk of “polluting the timeline” with convincing visuals that might later be mistaken for originals. Improvements in text-in-image accuracy enable more usable pedigree charts, while better transcription/handwritten recognition and AI-written “helper programs” open doors for tackling large datasets (such as census-sized searches) in ways that were previously impractical.

Watching the full webinar is worthwhile for the demonstrations and the decision-making framework behind them—how to choose the right tool for the job, how to structure prompts and inputs, and where human judgment must remain in control. The complete session also helps set expectations for 2026: wider adoption, more AI embedded in everyday software, and powerful (but potentially risky) agent-like features that demand caution. To go further, explore the additional links, prompts, and community resources included in the syllabus—designed to help genealogists apply these ideas confidently and responsibly in their own research.