Episodes

This episode is sponsored by the Family History AI Show Academy Beginning October 27, 2026, Mark and Steve are teaching Advanced Family History AI, the Level II course in their Family History AI series. The course is designed for genealogists with several months of experience using artificial intelligence tools who are ready to move beyond basic prompting to new tools and powerful techniques for researching and telling their family's story. Register for Mark and Steve's classes at: https://ti...

Description Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little return from institute season to unpack a summer that reshaped the artificial intelligence landscape, beginning with the new model families from OpenAI and Anthropic and how to choose among them. The hosts then examine desktop artificial intelligence applications, which read and write files directly in a folder on your own computer, followed by Mark’s Tip of the Week on connecting ChatGPT Desktop to Excel to update one of his complex spreadshe...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little open with a deep look at MyHeritage's new Scribe AI, a new AI tool that analyzes records, photographs, gravestones, and coats of arms and provides genealogy relevant research suggestions. It even works on your own photographs. This episode features an interview with Dave Vance, General Manager of Family Tree DNA, exploring how the hottest new genetic genealogy tests, provided by next-generation sequencing, deliver 400 times more genomic info than traditio...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little examine the major AI model upgrades released over the winter, comparing Anthropic's Opus 4.6, OpenAI's GPT 5.4, and Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro and their benefits for genealogists. In a special interview recorded at RootsTech 2026, they sit down with Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer of Family Locket to explore how the Research Like a Pro methodology integrates with AI tools for transcription, locality research, and DNA analysis. In RapidFire, they cover FamilySea...

In the last episode of 2025, Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little present their predictions for how artificial intelligence will transform genealogy research in 2026. This special episode examines fourteen key trends shaping the future of family history AI. Mark and Steve predict that AI tools will move from enthusiast circles into mainstream genealogy practice, with AI-enhanced apps like NotebookLM becoming more important than the underlying language models that people have focused on for t...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little present a special year-end episode, comparing their 2025 AI predictions to what actually unfolded in 2025. This episode is a great review of the top AI advancements in 2025! The hosts examine which predictions hit the mark, including the agentic AI hype cycle, plummeting AI costs driven by DeepSeek, and the dethroning of OpenAI as the top AI model. They also explore predictions that proved partially accurate, such as the shift to local language models and...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little examine Google's groundbreaking Gemini 3 release, which delivers state-of-the-art multimodal reasoning and sets a new benchmark for AI capabilities. They also explore ChatGPT's upgrade to version 5.1 with improved instruction following and better handling of longer conversation. The hosts discuss Canva's new Creative Operating System, which now generates AI-powered designs directly within the platform. This week's Tip of the Week demonstrates how Gemini ...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little discuss how new AI browsers are changing how genealogists research. They compare OpenAI's Atlas, Microsoft Edge, Google's Gemini, and Perplexity's Comet, explaining which features help family historians most. The hosts share lessons from the early AOL era that can be applied to the AI era. They also explore Anthropic's new Haiku 4.5, a very fast model that works great for simple tasks like transcription and summarization. Don’t miss this week's Tip of th...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore how Google's Nano Banana photo restoration tool will revolutionize image restoration by integrating with Adobe Photoshop. This move will greatly reduce unintended changes to historical photos when editing them with AI. Next, they unpack OpenAI’s move to make ChatGPT Projects available to free-tier users, making research organization more accessible for genealogists. This week's Tip of the Week provides essential guidance on the responsible use AI...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little review the biggest AI breakthroughs of 2025 so far, from DeepSeek's open-source revolution to GPT-5's unified reasoning model. Mark and Steve also celebrate FamilySearch's Full-Text Search moving from experimental labs to the main website, covering 1.4 billion records across 4,300 collections plus new summarization and filtering features. This week's Tip of the Week provides practical guidance on using Nano Banana for photo restoration, explaining when i...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little return from summer break to discuss the mixed reception of ChatGPT 5 and how OpenAI responded to user feedback. They explore Google's game-changing Nano Banana (Gemini Flash Image) model that revolutionizes selective image editing, reigniting debates about AI photo restoration in genealogy. This week's Tip of the Week emphasizes not letting perfect be the enemy of the good, especially when it comes to AI-powered citation. Mark shares his experience with ...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore the groundbreaking release of ChatGPT-5, which arrived after over a year of anticipation. They discuss how this new model transforms the AI landscape with better reasoning, larger context windows, and dramatically reduced hallucinations. The hosts examine OpenAI's new Study and Learn Mode, which acts as a personal tutor rather than just providing answers, making it ideal for genealogists who want to deepen their understanding of their favourite to...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little deliver a special same-day episode covering the long-awaited release of ChatGPT-5, which launched today, August 7, 2025. They explore the most significant improvements in the upgrade for genealogists, including automated model selection that eliminates confusing settings for beginners, enhanced reasoning capabilities that reduce hallucinations by 45%, and big increase in the amount of information or documents that can be processed at once. Mark demonstra...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore OpenAI's groundbreaking ChatGPT Agent, demonstrating how this autonomous tool can research, analyze, and perform complex tasks on your behalf. Next, they address important security concerns to consider in the new world of AI agents, introducing practical guidelines for protecting sensitive family data and avoiding prompt injection attacks. This week's Tip of the Week provides a back-to-basics guide on what AI is and its four core strengths: summa...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore Perplexity's groundbreaking Comet browser, which brings AI directly to web pages and can autonomously navigate sites to collect genealogical data. They examine Grok 4's impressive benchmark performance while discussing its limitations for genealogical research and safety concerns. This week's Tip of the Week introduces "context engineering" - the art of providing maximum information to AI tools through examples, documents, and prior conversations...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore how AI-based transcriptions are revolutionizing genealogical research across the industry. They examine FamilySearch's Full-Text Search expansion to over 1.25 billion records and Ancestry's new document transcription tool. The episode features an exclusive interview with David Ouimette from FamilySearch, who reveals how they're making previously unsearchable handwritten documents accessible through AI technology. This week's Tip of the Week demon...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little examine the controversial rise of AI image "restoration" and discuss how entirely new images are being generated, rather than the original photos being restored. This is raising concerns about the preservation of authentic family photos. They discuss Mark's reconsideration of canceling his Perplexity subscription after rediscovering its unique strengths for supporting research. The hosts analyze recent court rulings that permit AI training on legally acq...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little discuss recent updates from Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude that are reshaping AI capabilities for genealogists. Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro with its massive context window and Claude 4's hybrid reasoning models that excels at both writing and document analysis. They share insights from the RootsTech panel on responsible AI use in genealogy, and introduce the Coalition's five core principles for the response use of AI. The episode features an interview wit...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore OpenAI's revolutionary update to ChatGPT 4o's image generation capabilities, which now creates photorealistic images with accurate text and consistent characters across multiple images. They interview Jarrett Ross from The GeneaVlogger YouTube channel, who shares how he uses AI in his business and in his projects, including an innovative facial recognition project that identifies people in historical photographs from Poland. The hosts also examin...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore how DeepSeek has dramatically changed the AI landscape by releasing a powerful, inexpensive, open-source model that challenges American dominance in AI. They celebrate the first anniversary of FamilySearch's Full-Text Search, which has expanded from three collections to three thousand in just one-year, revolutionizing access to billions of previously unsearchable records. Mark and Steve examine how Google and Microsoft are integrating AI into the...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little share their predictions for artificial intelligence developments in 2025, with a special focus on how these changes will affect genealogists and family historians. They explore the emergence of AI agents, the shift to running language models locally on personal devices, and the introduction of chatbots to social media platforms. Mark and Steve also discuss how AI writing tools will become mainstream, even as costs decrease and capabilities increase. Thei...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore Google's powerful end-of-year releases that challenge other AI platforms. They examine Google's Deep Research tool and its ability to quickly create comprehensive research reports by combining information from multiple sources. Next, they discuss Facebook's controversial introduction of AI assistants to Facebook groups and what this might mean for genealogy communities. The hosts review Google's NotebookLM's significant updates, including enhance...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore OpenAI's "12 Days of OpenAI" campaign, particularly focusing on their new reasoning models and the expanded availability of Canvas across all ChatGPT models. They examine how ChatGPT's new camera view in Advanced Voice Mode transforms mobile research capabilities, demonstrating real-world applications for genealogists. This week's Tip of the Week reveals how to get the most out of free AI tools by leveraging each one's strengths: Gemini for summa...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little reveal their top recommendations for AI tools worth paying for in 2025. They also discuss which AI tools aren't worth paying for in 2025. One of them might surprise you! Next, Mark and Steve begin their review of OpenAI's "12 Days of OpenAI" announcements, beginning with the release of their enhanced O1 reasoning model. This new model will help you plan your family history research. This week's Tip of the Week challenges conventional thinking about AI ha...