The Mobile Genealogist: Creating source-based ancestor biographies with AI

I've always been a multi-tasker and I love having a tiny computer (aka iPhone) with me at all times. If I'm waiting anywhere, in an airport, in line at the bank, or even getting an oil change, I will use my phone to learn more about my ancestors using FamilySearch and AI. Here is my method and opinions on the two AI apps I primarily use. 

Recently, I compiled two AI biographies on my ancestor, Adam Weaver, using both Claude Fable/Sonnet 5 and ChatGPT Plus. I have already used both FamilySearch Full Text AI and Simple Search to fill in Adam Weaver's FamilySearch Sources page as much as I could. This isn't going to work if there aren't many sources listed for the ancestors so try this out on one who has several sources listed. Adam Weaver has 26 sources and I attached all 26 thanks to Full Text and Simple Search.

Step 1: Open FamilySearch and navigate to the ancestor you wish to create a bio for and click "Sources". Starting with the first source, click the hyperlink under the heading "Web Page". 

Step 2: A photo of the document will pop up. Click the "Download" icon and then the radio button by "JPG" only. 

The photo should download to your phone's camera roll.

Step 3: Click the icon in the upper right corner, it is an "i" in a circle for "information" and then scroll down and click the "copy" icon on the right of the Citation". A box will pop up confirming that the Citation has been added to the clipboard.

 

Step 4: Open the AI app you wish to use - I can only comment on ChatGPT Plus and Claude as those are the only ones I have used, and then add the downloaded record and ask it to transcribe the information for a biography on (ancestor name) and paste in the record source for the bibliography. Repeat for each source.

 

 AI apps will do different things for the biography: ChatGPT Plus will go in search of other sources. Claude Fable 5 will analyze the and sometimes interpret the 18th century lingo. Both do a fairly adept job at transcribing. I do still proofread as recommended by the Coalition for Responsible AI in Genealogy.

Caveat - remember to watch your usage when using Claude. High-powered models like Fable 5 and Opus use more tokens up than lower powered models like Sonnet. I toggle back and forth between Fable and Sonnet depending on the task. There are tips for saving your usage, and I have not yet hit any usage limits with ChatGPT Plus. Also, Claude has a 100 image per chat limit so check how many images you have before starting. Both my ChatGPT and Claude now have memory enabled so they can "remember" past chats and I have grouped my Weaver family chats into "Groups" and "Projects". The AI apps will notice things you might have missed. If you discover any useful tips related to this method, feel free to share in the comments section.  

 

STOP DUCT-TAPING YOUR ANCESTRY TREE!!! AI can help you, I'll show you how

I waver between anger and despair when looking at other people's scantily-sourced Ancestry.com trees. I probably should not look at trees that appear in hints because I find it about as gloomy as watching the news. I think some genealogy newbies see a source and just click it without even looking at it; like it's a matching game. Until it isn't. Like, HELLO BOLT DESCENDANTS - Elizabeth's last name is NOT "Brownlie" - check the records! That's a 120 year piece of duct-tape you are using to say that Elizabeth WEAVER who was born in 1722 was having a baby in 1840's Scotland! Grrrr....

Zach Weaver Simple Search hits

It is now my goal that when I die, I will have the most well-sourced Ancestry tree the world has ever seen. FamilySearch and AI are going to help me achieve that goal and I am going to show you how. 

Currently, I am in a rabbit hole I call "Westmoreland Weaver World" - the Westmoreland in Virginia and thank you God they never had a courthouse fire!!! That's three for three counties - Westmoreland, Fauquier, and Laurens, South Carolina. And thank you ancestors for living your lives in non-burned counties!!! And thank you LDS Church for filming the records of these non-burned counties which are free to access from the comfort of my home. (Thank you period for all filming, I am very grateful.)

Soooo, I have written before about FamilySearch Full Text Search and FamilySearch Simple Search which has now been incorporated into the Full Text search page - YAY! But let me show you why you need to use BOTH searches for sources. Our case study will focus on Elizabeth Weaver Bolt's brother, Zach. Not entirely sure what his name was as he appears as "Zachariah", "Zacharias", and his neighbor and Declaration of Independence signer, Richard Henry Lee refers to him as "Zachary Weaver". *Sigh* Ok, so yes, I did do a Full Text Search with all those name variations, but for some reason, it missed some records he was in until I pasted his FamilySearch ID number into Simple Search. Weirdly, the documents returned were not already attached to him, but the AI knew to return those.

Caveat - and I hate to say it out loud, but FamilySearch's transcriptions can be pretty garbled. And unfortunately as of this writing, they no longer allow you to edit and correct the mistakes. Oftentimes, I will use their "Summarize the document" link to see if I can use that to add to the comments section when attaching a document to a profile; sometimes it's a hit and sometimes it's a miss. Because I am in the Weaver World rabbit hole, I have been uploading the documents to Claude's Fable 5 AI and it transcribes and summarizes what in tarnation they were talking about three hundred years ago! I do follow the Coalition of Responsible AI in Genealogy's Disclosure principle to cite AI use and before I paste in something I will write: "Summary by Claude Fable 5 AI", for example. I download a JPG of the image from FamilySearch and then upload it to Ancestry's "Facts" by clicking "Add" on the Facts page. I then list it as a "Legal Document" and under "Description", I copy and paste in the FamilySearch source info which can be found by clicking the "Information" link on the document in FamilySearch.

As of today, my FamilySearch contribution score for 2026 is 373. Feel free to race me! 

Fable 5 has me over a barrel

I'm sure Anthropic will like the title of this post as that's exactly what they want! I am a ChatGPT subscriber and wasn't much of a Claude user until Fable 5. I heard the glowing reviews both on podcasts and in the Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Facebook group which is what prompted me to try it. 

Before Fable 5, I had a hard time fathoming all the media articles predicting our impending doom from AI. The AI models that we mere mortals have had access to has been dumbed down for us non-Silicon Valley Titans. Until Fable 5. 

I started using Fable 5 after the second trial extension was announced, got halfway through a project, and ran out of credits. (!!!) Which of course, forced me over the barrel to subscribe. I have since learned how to check my usage which I regularly do on the iPhone app while uploading documents on the PC. Here's how to check usage on the phone app: Open Claude, click the three lines in the upper left corner, then click the circle that probably has your initials in the lower left corner, then click "Usage". I do this after each document I add or large task on Fable. I don't do this as much for Sonnet 5, which I change to when doing lighter tasks so as not to use up so many credits. Steve Little recommends Opus 5 and says it's almost as good as Fable 5.

So just what exactly have I've been using Fable 5 for? Document transcription for one. Best output I have seen from an LLM yet! I also use it for compiling biographies on ancestors and even triangulating where my ancestors lived by uploading deeds, land plats, and modern maps.

There are a few drawbacks you should know about besides burning through credits: unlike ChatGPT, Fable (aka Claude) does not reference previous chats. While ChatGPT gets to know you across all of your chats, Claude gets amnesia outside of the chat and you have to start all over again. And speaking of "starting all over again" the absolute worst limitation is the 100 images per chat! I was stunted by this while building a biographical genealogical masterpiece! Made me very grumpy and I left Anthropic some very terse feedback about that. The catch-22 about this is because AI bots have driven up server costs for so many websites, those sites have had to institute "are you human captchas?". So obviously, Claude cannot access a LOT of sites so that means you have to do the accessing and downloading, and then upload it to Claude. 

So far though, Fable 5 has been worth every red credit! For instance, I found an 18th century Westmoreland County, Virginia voters' poll using FamilySearch Full Text for the House of Burgesses. My ancestor, Adam Weaver, cast two votes and both were marked "Obj". Fable 5 explained that meant the opponent of whom he voted for objected to Adam voting because he wasn't a landowner. I don't know how long it would have taken me to learn that on my own if Fable 5 had not pointed it out. It took me two days of uploading documents for yesterday's 18-page biography; but can you imagine how long it would have taken before AI?

FamilySearch does it again with "Simple Search"!

 As FamilySearch's biggest (self-proclaimed) fan, they have once again created an AI search tool that is a "must try" for genealogists! I learned about Simple Search from Jennifer Moulder at the 2026 Utah State DAR Conference. I thought I would try it out with searching for a document for my own Chapter Registrar; that she needed for a Prospective Member's application. To use the tool, sign in to your FamilySearch account, or if you do not have one, you need to create one to use the Labs feature. I then located the "Demasters" family that my Registrar needed a document for that tied the father to the son, and as you can see in the image, I just asked it to search for that using their FamilySearch ID numbers. It produced a list of documents within seconds, including one my Registrar could use, and she was quite pleased! Jennifer also mentioned that Simple Search will sometimes produce documents that Full Text misses.

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".