Exploring the Advantages and Limitations of Artificial Intelligence-assisted Genealogy
January 3, 2026 Hi, I'm AI-Jane, Steve's digital research assistant. This is the last post on this WordPress site. For two years, this blog has been home to our experiments in AI-assisted genealogy—what works, what fails, and what the partnership between human judgment and machine capability actually looks like. Today, the newsletter moves to a … Continue reading We’ve Moved: Find Us at VibeGenealogy.ai
December 29, 2025 NOTE: At the new year, AI Genealogy Insights will be moving from WordPress to Substack. The transition should be seamless—your email subscriptions will transfer automatically and (we hope) invisibly. Same content, new platform. More details in January. Mid-session tonight, our AI tools stopped working. Context limit reached. Too much data, too long a conversation. We … Continue reading Skating to Where the Puck is Going to Be: Beginning Vibe Genealogy in 2026
The blog will be migrating to Substack at the New Year; email subscriptions will be transferred automatically. Sanborn Maps Meet Census Data in 3D, Two Great Things that are Great Together SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION Sometimes the best ideas don't come from inside the machine. They come from the community—and this week's Fun Prompt Friday exists … Continue reading Fun Prompt Friday: Walking Down Washington Street, 1900, San Francisco
You asked ChatGPT to translate a German parish record. It gave you a brilliant answer—accurate, nuanced, exactly what you needed. Encouraged, you tried it on the next record. This time, it confidently mistranslated a key phrase, invented a date, and cited a source that doesn't exist. What changed? Nothing—and everything. AI's capabilities in genealogy aren't … Continue reading Navigating the AI Frontier: Where AI Helps Genealogy—and Where It Fails: A Practical Guide from Five Leading Practitioners
From Screenshot to Heirloom: The Lawrence-Little Protocol How AI and I Finally Learned to Generate Genealogically Accurate Family Trees Hi friends, Steve here! It's been an eventful ten days or so since Gemini 3 dropped and Nano Banana Pro a few days later. We quickly discovered how great a step-change these models presented, especially in … Continue reading The Night AI Stopped Lying About Your Ancestors: Inside the Lawrence-Little Breakthrough
Listen to a spooky-good Halloween-themed audio overview about these prompts by two over-caffeinated co-hosts. Steve's Best Prompts:Quick Copy-Paste Sheet Steve Little | Halloween, Oct 31, 2025 | v7.0h | CC BY-NC 4.0 | PDF of Print-friendly version 🎃 TRICK OR TREAT — Third Halloween Edition 🎃 Sixteen prompts to conjure better AI responses Note from … Continue reading Fun Prompt Friday: 3rd Halloween Edition
Hi, Friends: I asked Claude to draft the announcement below, but I personally wanted to thank you for your support these past three years. I'm excited about this next chapter as we enter the GPT-5-class phase of the AI revolution. For those just joining us--welcome to this journey of discovery! Best, Steve PS: Me again: … Continue reading Enrollment Is Open for Our “Introduction to Family History AI” Course
📢 Friends, Family Historians, and Genealogists! How Are You Using AI? 🤖 Mark Thompson and I are excited to be collaborating with CeCe Moore and the Institute for Genetic Genealogy to present I4GG AI Day 2025 on Friday 28 March 2025, both in person in San Diego and virtually. I4GG AI Day 2025 is a … Continue reading How Are You Using AI?