Artificial intelligence is changing how we research family history. Some of that change is genuinely useful. Some of it is hype. And some of it—if we’re not careful—risks polluting the genealogical record with confident-sounding fiction.
This site exists to help you tell the difference.
What You’ll Find Here
Blog — News, tutorials, experiments, and commentary on AI and genealogy. Some posts are written by me; others are collaborations with AI-Jane, my digital research assistant, who writes from “inside the machine” about what AI actually does versus what people assume it does.
Prompts — A growing library of open-source prompts I’ve developed for genealogical work: transcribing handwritten documents, restoring historical photographs, extracting facts from messy sources, and more. Copy them into your AI tool of choice and get to work.
Loathsome Jargon — A plain-language glossary of AI terminology for genealogists. Because “context window” and “hallucination” shouldn’t require a computer science degree.
Who’s Behind This
I’m Steve Little. Here’s what I do:
- Founder, AI Genealogy Insights (you’re here)
- Co-host, The Family History AI Show podcast, with Mark Thompson
- Co-founder, The Family History AI Academy
- AI Program Director, National Genealogical Society
- Founding member, Coalition for Responsible AI in Genealogy
I trace my roots to Ashe County, North Carolina, where all 32 of my 3rd-great-grandparents had settled by 1820. My background combines computational linguistics, library systems, and thirty years of genealogical research—which turns out to be useful preparation for figuring out what AI can and can’t do for family historians.
More about me: About
Where to Start
New to AI genealogy? Start with the podcast. Mark and I cover the latest tools and developments each week, with practical advice you can use immediately.
Ready to try something? Browse the Prompts page, pick one, and test it on your own materials.
Want to go deeper? The Academy offers structured courses for genealogists ready to build real skills.
Just exploring? The Blog has years of experiments, breakthroughs, and failures—all documented so you can learn from what worked and what didn’t.
AI is a powerful tool. It’s also an imperfect one that can sound confident while being completely wrong. The difference between useful AI genealogy and dangerous AI genealogy is your willingness to verify.
You bring the standards. The technology brings the processing power. Together—human judgment plus machine capability—we can do work that neither could do alone.
May your sources be primary and your AI outputs verified.
— Steve
P.S. — If you encounter hallucinated ancestors or summoned demons, I take no responsibility. But I do take questions: Contact.