The Family History AI Show

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 tra...

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 t...

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 ...

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 c...

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 genealogis...

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 informat...

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-...

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 ...

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 acces...

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 analy...

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 fo...

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 peopl...

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...

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 main...

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...

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 ...

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...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore the AI developments that had the biggest impact on genealogy in 2024.

This week’s episode spotlights MyHeritage's newest viral tool, LiveMemory, which brings old photos to life through animation. Next, Mark and Steve count down the year's top AI breakthroughs for genealogists. The groundbreaking FamilySearch full-text search takes the top spot by providing unprecedented access to huge ...

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little discuss how Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet upgrade has made Claude an even better AI writer. This make's it even easier to write a great research report. 

They move on to explore OpenAI's new desktop apps and Advanced Voice Mode, discussing how voice interaction could transform genealogical research, particularly for those who prefer speaking to typing. Combining search and AI in the same tool ...