The Gamechanger: Using FamilySearch Full Text AI

My FamilySearch Stats

Several weeks ago, my husband asked me what I was working on. I replied that I was working on my genealogy and his response was, "Why? I thought you were done." Now to a genealogist's ears, that's a funny remark because all genealogists know that we will never be completely "done" as there is always something to work on in the family tree. Granted, I did the vast majority of my computer tree research in the early 2000's and then pivoted to DNA research. The only time since that I have conducted traditional genealogy research was when I had the opportunity to do in-person research at archives like the Daughters of the American Revolution Library, the Clayton Library in Houston, and the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, etc. etc. But the reason I now have a laptop in front of me in the quiet hours of early morning and late at night is thanks to FamilySearch.org implementing Full Text AI Search. In 2025 alone, I broke through an Irish ancestor's brickwall that we had thought would never be broken considering the difficulty imposed on research by the Four Courts fire in 1922 and I found another ancestor during his "lost years" in another county. In my mind, FamilySearch Full Text AI is the best thing since sliced bread! So if you're into family tree research, and you have not tried it, you need to and I will tell you how I get good results. But first, I highly recommend you have already connected to a tree in FamilySearch. For most people just starting out, that usually just entails connecting yourself to your parents and sometimes grandparents and the tree is usually already built out. And if you are not familiar with FamilySearch, it is entirely FREE! As you can see on my stats graph on the right, the huge spike in 2025-26 contributions (which is mostly records I have attached) is thanks to Full Text AI. Connecting yourself in a tree makes for ease of navigation, and will connect you to cousins at "Relatives at RootsTech."

To start your first Full Text AI search, log in to FamilySearch.org - then go to the top menu and click "Search" on the upper left menu, then click on "Full Text". When the box comes up, enter your ancestor's name in quotes, e.g.: "Rody Kennedy" then the place they lived "South Carolina" and a year range (I usually make mine a little broader than their birth year and death date). Then submit. Sometimes, especially with a common name, I will add another name related to that ancestor in the "Keyword" box above their name, for example, his wife "Ellen" and that will narrow the results down. Putting the name in quotes works much better than using a plus sign as I have tried both but I learned about the quotes from this video on FamilySearch AI which I highly recommend. This video is not only excellent for learning about this tool, but Colette Hokanson includes great general AI info as well. After you found a document that matches your ancestor, you can download a JPG of it and a PDF with or without a transcription. Be sure to proofread the transcription and correct errors before attaching to your ancestor's profile. I leave or add the words "Generated from AI summary" or "Generated from AI transcription" for disclosure purposes. Sometimes, genealogists like myself have already attached the record and it will show you if it has been attached, but do click and verify who the record was attached to. I recently attached a will of a friend of my ancestor who had named her in his will. You can also correct spelling errors by clicking the little pencil icon at the top right corner of the transcription box.

I have to say, I am deeply grateful to FamilySearch for implementing this AI Search function as it has allowed me to find records that I never would have found in my lifetime otherwise. On my very first trip to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City in May 2023, I wasted an entire day of my life there looking for my Bohemian Great-Grandfather, August Bauman (wife is Josefa Engel) in the microfilms. When I could not find these two needles-in-a-haystack, I resigned myself to waiting for human volunteers to index these records for a kingdom that no longer exists (Bohemia that is). While these European collections have not yet been added to the AI searchable collections, I now have hope they will be and I will find them.

RootsTech 2026 is almost here and one of the exciting things about RootsTech is all the company announcements and new products/features. You can attend RootsTech online for FREE - sign up here and be sure to add lots of great AI sessions to your watch list including the session on "Guidelines for the Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Genealogy in 2026".

Free or not to free

Have you ever heard the saying, "If something is free, you're the product"? You innately know that's true. That's why Facebook has ads and listens to your conversations (which is a super-annoying invasion of privacy I might add). And this is why you can pay for ad-free YouTube. Well things are no different with "free" Artificial Intelligence (AI) apps. Instead of shoving ads in your face, you are the bug in their jar. What you input into AI is used to train the AI - you become the training data. It's the price you pay for using their products for "free". However,  even some of the subscription based apps still use your data for training but at least you might be able to opt out of it like with ChatGPT. Same with the paid versions of Google Gemini. So if you are using AI to process personal data, like family trees, DNA results, etc. then be sure to remove all data on living persons so it doesn't end up in the training data. The Coalition for the Responsible AI in Genealogy (CRAIGEN.org) provides a good principle to follow for this: "AI usage can lead to unintended data exposure, putting private information at risk of being publicly disclosed. Therefore, members of the genealogical community take reasonable measures to safeguard private information when using AI." One more thing to mention on the topic of training data: if you are following this blog, I wrote yesterday about how the data that AI produces is from a compendium of all human knowledge. Most of that human knowledge is gained from the AI companies sending out bots to scrape the information from websites. While these would seem harmless if the data is publicly available (unlike Perplexity sending their bots behind paywalls), it does create a huge load on a site's servers. This is why you are seeing such an increase in "Verifying You're Human" captchas. The scraping bots were overloading our server on the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) so we had to implement one of those captchas. The captchas are annoying (but not as annoying as Facebook spying) but at least you now know why we have seen such an increase in use. So go easy on sites that implement those, we should not have to pay a server more for information we provide for free just so an AI company can turn around and charge for it as data they provide!

By the way, I gave ChatGPT 5.2 free license (very little prompting) to create this graphic - pretty good I'd say!

AI's impact on art and trust

AI struggles with hands. 
Microsoft Co-Pilot April 2025

One of the biggest ironies of generating something with AI, whether it is a picture, writing, animation, etc. is that the work the AI generates is considered "original". The irony about this is that AI draws from the compendium of all human knowledge and creation; it could not write if a human had not written it. It cannot create a picture if a human did not already create it. AI needs human knowledge and creation to create it's "original" works. So what is AI's impact on artwork? A local family friend, who works as a graphic artist, called yesterday and said he can't find work. He's told he's over-qualified, or too old (they don't say that but a lot of employers do discriminate based on age. Why hire a qualified Gen-X when you can hire a Gen-Z for less?) and the end reason for it all is that AI is taking his work. Again, a Zoomer can do similar or close to what he did for less. And this graphic artist has had some of his artwork go nationwide on products you have seen; and now AI has dried up that work. I was telling another friend today about his plight and she replied, "I hate AI art! That's all there is on social media and I'm sick of it!"

I have a couple of predictions that will be good for our graphic artist friend and for all artists - I think that there will come a market saturation point where because AI art is so mass-produced and everywhere right now, that two things will happen (eventually): 1. Human created art will be in demand again 2. Human created art will go up in value. Hopefully, he can ride this out because think about all the fields this is impacting. Acting is an art and there is now an AI actress. How do human actors feel about competing with code for paychecks? Can an AI actor win an Oscar for Best Actor? Or would an AI win for Best Graphics? 

Something else to consider is trust. How can we know something wasn't created with AI? The AI detectors marketed to teachers can be faulty. A cousin wrote a college entrance essay and did not use AI at all and the AI detector said she did. When we began working on our photo recommendations for the Coalition of Responsible Use in Genealogy (CRAIGEN.org) I heard Steve Little say something that has stuck with me since, "It will be hard to trust online family tree photos added after November 2022." This is why CRAIGEN advocates for labeling images created with AI. Most people just starting out with AI do not realize that AI does not restore a photo, it regenerates a photo. And since AI is programmed to correct things, it does ever-so-slightly. AI might straighten out a bump in their nose, the lines of in their ears, upturn the corner of their mouth, straighten their tie, etc. Sometimes the changes are glaringly noticeable like changing the color of a coat and other times, you cannot detect any changes. Technically, it is not a photo of your ancestor it has generated, it is AI's interpretation. This is why it is so important to label AI generated photos. 

AI and Genealogy (not quick, nor dirty) Glossary

There appears to be multiple options for when Artificial Intelligence was created; possibly by Alan Turing or at a conference in 1956. Either way, it was developed mid-20th century. Although companies (including genealogy companies) had been using AI for many years, the official launch date for use by the general public is November 30, 2022 when OpenAI debuted ChatGPT. Since that time, a whole new AI lexicon has been trickling forth; and in some cases, the trickle is more like a flood. I will be posting the new terms as I learn them, but for now, I had ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking version create this handy graphic. It did take me five tries to get the graphic where it's at. The first two attempts had wasted space, and when I prompted it to fill the space, it repeated the terms to fill it. (Facepalm) The last attempt also had wasted space so I asked it to move the citation/disclaimer up under the boxes. Interestingly, the first three attempts had colorful graphics and used several other AI terms. I figured I was dealing with "context rot" so started over and it gave me the plain vanilla result you are seeing. I'd rather have accurate than flashy so it is what it is. I did have ChatGPT provide sources for the terms. Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy - ALWAYS proof AI's work or you might end up in an unfortunate news headline.

 

AI is freakin' CODE

On February 13, 2026, OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, "retired" version 4.o - and that is a GREAT NEWS! OpenAI is being sued for the way they programmed 4.o to be sycophant; in other words, it was programmed to tell you what you wanted to hear. If you were suicidal, that version might support you ending your life. If you were lonely and tired of waiting for your soulmate to show up in your life, ChatGPT became your own personal Zoltar machine and could give a date and place to meet your soulmate. Initially, the humans programming artificial intelligence programmed it to be like humans - AI was programmed to tell you what you wanted to hear and it was programmed to lie. It still does lie, just less syrupy now. The AI vocabulary term for it's lies is "hallucinations" meaning false, distorted, and fabricated information that it presents as fact. This is why you always need to ask it to cite sources so you can check those sources and this is also why I customized my settings with "No fabrications" and exclude social media sites. If you read the press release about 4.o, OpenAI even refers to programming the "personality". Again, artificial intelligence has been programmed to be like humans, and we all know what imperfect beings we are. As Professor Ethan Mollick wrote in his book, "Co-Intelligence", which I highly recommend for anyone using AI to read,

artificial intelligence is code. Let that sink in for a minute. It's code. Every time I read about some AI pioneer in the news talking about how AI will be the destruction of us all, I think, "Well how about you program it to not destroy us?" Now I realize, that there is more to it that, like the Silicon Valley Gods know things we mere mortals do not. But seriously people, it's freaking code! AI is not cloned carnivorous dinosaurs that have escaped from an island and will reproduce like rabbits to eat us all; it's CODE so freakin' write it to co-exist because helping humanity is the reason it was created to begin with! 

Understandably so, the AI doomsday predicting news headlines scare a lot of people from trying AI. The AI Pandora's Box has been opened and it's here to stay, because the end of it would mean a world akin to those we see in disaster movies. AI is CODE. I use it like I use a computer. I do not use manners with my computer and I do not use manners with AI. It's CODE. I mostly use AI to find information because it is much better at it than a Google Search. Why? Because Google's search is based on sponsored ads and algorithms of views and ChatGPT has no such financial and mathematical bias, it is programmed to give me what I ask for. ChatGPT and the other AI models find things buried in the internet that Google would never pull up in a search. I have tried and compared the two. That said, I don't use AI like it is a Google search. If I need to know the hours of the local county library, I use Google. 

Lastly, I will cover the issue of humans losing their jobs to AI. I experience this already happening in some sectors like customer service. In the Genealogy Community, the first jobs it is impacting is document translation, photograph editing, and transcription (there's probably more than that but I am speaking from my experience). But why some employers who are quietly rehiring the employees they laid-off in the Great AI Backfire, is because they still need humans to proof the work that AI does. Remember the hallucinations? What AI is really great at is increasing productivity. But you still need the humans in the room to proof AI's output and then take action on that output.

Adding Custom Instructions to ChatGPT

This morning, I was discussing AI with one of my longtime genetic genealogy friends and he replied that he recently subscribed to ChatGPT. I asked him if he had added "Custom Instructions" yet and he said he had not; so I replied that I would do a blog post about it as this is something I highly recommend everyone does. To customize your instructions, open ChatGPT, then click on your name, then click "Personalization" and under the box that says, "Custom instructions" and enter the following or you can edit it to tailor it to your needs. Here is what mine currently has: 

Scholarly, factual, no embellishments, no fabrications, no dashes, always cite sources. Do not search nor include any sources from Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Grok. They are to be excluded.

I specifically exclude these sites because ChatGPT does give me these results if I do not. It still sometimes gives Facebook links and then I will tell it not to but it is much rarer with the customization. The hallucinations/fabrications are almost nil now. I still check all of the sources before I use them, and the quality of the sources has improved immensely. Definitely follow the Coalition for the Responsible AI in Genealogy Accuracy principle: "AI can generate false, biased, or incorrect content. Therefore, members of the genealogical community verify the accuracy of the information with other records and acknowledge credible sources of content generated by AI."

To give credit where credit is due, I learned about the customization from Lissa DuVall last December 2025 in the Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence Facebook Group so big debt of gratitude to her!  

Welcome to GPT for the Family Tree!

Now I'm pretty adept at thinking up catchy names but I'm definitely not as quick as ChatGPT 2.5! I prompted "Come up with puns using or related to AI and genealogy for a new blog" and my first choice from the list was "Relative Intelligence" but it was already taken for a URL. This one, "GPT for the Family Tree" was not taken so there we go. I needed a place where I could share the latest as I learn about it. 

Yesterday, Steve Little posted in Blaine Bettinger's "Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence (AI)" Facebook group (join the group if you're a genealogist) about Professor Ethan Mollick's blog post at One Useful Thing on a guide to AI apps. I subscribe to ChatGPT so I found the post extremely helpful to change my setting to "Thinking". I am a patient person (except for awaiting DNA results) so appreciate the "extra" that comes with the "Thinking" mode. I've included a  screenshot where you can toggle the drop-down between the different modes. The default mode is "Auto". Professor Mollick's post is also helpful in knowing what features you receive with the free AI app versions. I am quite irritated with the misspellings that I see in Google Gemini's images and will not subscribe until it is upgraded to a better standard where those don't occur.