The 2025 AI Genealogy Do-Over

AI Genealogy Do-Over, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Genealogy 2 Minutes

For 2025, I’ve begun an AI Genealogy Do-Over with a kicker of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.

The year 2024 was a remarkable time to explore the benefits and limits of artificial intelligence for genealogy and family history. There was no shortage of new AI developments to try, and I expect 2025 will be even more eventful. One of my greatest challenges over the past two years has been making time to work on my own family history and to hone my genealogical skills. Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, I’ve spent so much time mastering the new AI tools that my time spent doing genealogy has suffered.

So today, New Year’s Day, 2025, I began an AI Genealogy Do-Over. My primary focus will be genealogy. If I see where AI assistance may be helpful or useful for a task, I’ll document and chronicle those use cases (and failures). My hope is that this AI-assisted do-over will be an opportunity for folks to see how these new tools can be used responsibly and effectively today—not just for the most sophisticated genealogy work, but for the basics of family history research, tasks a beginner might encounter.

The focus, however, will remain on genealogy. Today, countless research tasks are still better accomplished through traditional methods rather than artificial intelligence. That said, the number of genealogical use cases is growing. Over the past two years, I have discovered and documented more than a dozen of these use cases and I’ve created and shared over 80 free AI tools to help genealogists and family historians. But for each success I’ve shared, there were nine or more failures. As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Similarly, curious folks today often try to use AI for everything, even when traditional methods are more effective. This year, we’ll talk about why AI adoption can be challenging as we document its limits and benefits.

In 2011, I completed a 365 photo-a-day challenge after failing two previous attempts. To say completing that project felt good would be an understatement: it remains one of my most satisfying accomplishments. I learned a lot from those earlier failures; one lesson was pacing. So, while I want to write 5,000 words right now, providing context, motivation, hopes, fears, and expectations, we’ll sprinkle that in later as needed. Another reason I succeeded with the 2011 project was a commitment to share with others. I won’t be posting daily about the AI-do-over as I did for the photo project, but I plan to share updates online more frequently, at least weekly, for the 52 Ancestors portion of this project.

So rather than inundate you with backstory, I’ll simply let you know that although I decided to do this project months ago, I haven’t spent any time or money preparing for this AI genealogy do-over until today. I will try to model best practices to the best of my ability.

So, here are the three things I did today to get started:

  1. I bought a copy of the 2025 edition of Thomas MacEntee’s The Genealogy Do-Over Workbook, which I intend to read this weekend.
  2. I created a new genealogy database, starting with myself, which is the only person in the database on Day One.
  3. I wrote this post.

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Published by Steve Little

Steve Little is the AI Program Director for the National Genealogical Society and the founder of AI Genealogy Insights. I trace my deep roots to one Appalachian county, where, by 1820, all 32 of my 3rd-great-grandparents had settled—many even earlier than that. In fact, 60 of my most recent ancestors were born, lived, and died there, in Ashe County, NC. My passion lies in AI & genetic genealogy: with a keen interest in endogamy, pedigree collapse, and the art of deciphering multiple relationships through DNA segment triangulation, and an insatiable curiosity to explore beneficial uses and current limits of artificial intelligence in genealogy. Beyond genealogy, I wear many hats: I'm a husband and a dad, a Methodist pastor, and a Virginian. My hobbies span from bird watching and sky gazing to chess and film. Additionally, I'm an avid reader, writer, photographer, and regex script hacker.

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