(Video Show Notes) Avoid the pain of easy mistakes and get the most out of the new FREE AI Research Assistant at FamilySearch. Here’s the new genealogy research tool featuring A.I. that can help you uncover exciting new genealogy records about your ancestors. Watch to the end for a surprising AI twist and my bonus tip for success.

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What the AI Research Assistant can do for you:

1. Search your tree to find people to add.
2. Find sources about a person in your tree from the web.
3. Provide answers to genealogical questions.
4. Suggest additional resources where you might find more information.

Set up a free account on FamilySearch.org

Go to FamilySearch.org and sign up.

Create Your Family Tree

You must have a family tree on FamilySearch in order to use the AI Research Assistant.

If you are new to FamilySearch and don’t have a tree, it’s important to understand that users don’t have individual trees like they do on other genealogy websites like Ancestry and MyHeritage. Instead, FamilySearch has one large global tree that everyone connects to and collaborates on. So, create your BRANCH of the tree starting with yourself and eventually you’ll start adding ancestors that already exist on the global tree, thereby connecting you to it.

There’s also something called Family Group Trees which are private, collaborative spaces within the FamilySearch Family Tree that allows invited living relatives to work together on a shared family tree, attaching photos and stories, and contributing information only visible to the group members. Good news, the AI Research Assistant can search these as well.

How to Find and Activate AI Research Assistant

Now that you have connected to the global Family Tree, you’ll need to connect the Assistant to your account.

1. Head to the Experiments page. The easiest way to get there is to click the FamilySearch logo in the upper left corner of your screen.
2. Scroll down and click
3. On the Experiments home, page scroll down to Grow Your Tree with AI Research Assistant.
4. And click Try it.
5. Click Start the Experiment.

Where to Start Researching

Right away you’ll see that the AI Research Assistant is on your FamilySearch home page and it’s already gone to work finding people it thinks could be added to your tree. You could start looking at these right now…but WAIT!

Are you in charge of your genealogy research or is FamilySearch’s AI in charge of your research?

Answer: It’s YOU. So, I recommend that you take a moment and think about what YOU want to find. All good genealogy research starts with a good genealogy research question.

The AI Research Assistant is really 2 products:

The first is designed much like Hints that you are probably use to seeing on other genealogy websites. It suggests people to be added to your family tree. You can certainly pursue these, but realistically your time is limited. Do you really want to chase these down when they may be completely unrelated from your personal research goals? Product 1 can encourage a scattered approach to genealogy research that doesn’t do you a lot of favors. Also, currently you’re very likely run into people that AI suggests are new, who are actually in fact already in the family tree.

Because of this we’re going to keep you in the driver’s seat and focus on what they call Product 2. It’s designed to assist you while you work on the lines that you have determined to be the focus of your research. However, the techniques we’re about to cover will also serve you well if you do decide to pursue one of the people suggested by Product 1.

In my example, I wanted to learn more about my direct ancestor George Russell and his family.

Navigate to the exact branch of the tree you want to work on.

I like navigating through the tree to get there because it also refreshes my memory on the family relationships.

1. From the homepage, In the menu go to Family Tree and click Tree.
2. Click on the person’s name. This will pop out some quick details about him.
3. Click the Person button to go to this person’s full profile page.

Asking Questions of the AI Research Assistant

The AI Research Assistant that we activated is now on the profile page. Click the Open button and this will pop out the AI Assistant pane on the right side of the screen.

This is where you can ask questions that will help you in your genealogy research. And notice that the assistant has already started proposing questions that you can ask. Things like:

• Help me find genealogical information about George Russell.
• Who were George Russell’s parents?
• Who were George Russell’s children? And so on.

Using this approach really helps us sidestep a potential disaster. There are lots of George Russell’s in the FamilySearch global family tree, and we don’t want to get mixed up with any of them. But because we are on the profile page of my George Russell, and he is identified with his unique ID number, the AI Research Assistant is only going to answer these questions pertaining to THIS particular George Russell.

If we click one of these proposed questions, the assistant starts analyzing a wide variety of sources. It will search:

• what’s already attached to the FamilySearch family tree,
• the vast number of records available at FamilySearch,
• including Full-Text Search records (be sure and watch my video about how to use the amazing Full-Text AI Search at FamilySearch),
• and the web for additional sources.

This thing’s powerful!

After a few moments, you’ll receive some results. You can review all the sources that the assistant has used in your chat by clicking the box icon at the top of the pane. And you can save the chat by clicking the save icon next to it.

Remember, this is a chat. Just like with your favorite chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others, the AI Research Assistant is built to discuss your research with you, helping you to develop ideas and drill down to answers.

For example, the assistant suggested the names of several children. I’ll first want to compare them to what’s already confirmed in the tree.

Next, I’ll review the sources that it found. In this case, the Assistant found a Find-A-Grave entry, and a great book called Butler, Ohio, United States; Hamilton, Butler, Ohio, United States; Brown, Ohio, United States Funeral Program, Biography, History 1891 that includes an entry about George Russell and his family.

Attaching Sources to a Person in the Tree

After clicking a source like this and confirming it is the right person, you’ll want to attach it to the tree.

Step 1

On the page where you are viewing the source, click the Attach to Tree button at the top of the screen.

In the pop-out pane, the first step is to add a title for the source and any notes you want to add.

Click the View Attachments link to see if it’s already attached to people in the tree.

Click the Next button.

Step 2

Select a person that you want to attach the source to. You’ll see a list of some people from your tree to choose from.

You can also go back to your previous tab and copy the unique ID for the person and paste it in the Person ID box to ensure you have the right person. This really helps if you have multiple people in your tree with the same name.

After you select the person, click the Next button.

Step 3

Here you can select all the people related to the person that are also mentioned in the record.

Click the Next button.

Step 4

Review your work and add notes on why you believe this source is a good match.

Then finish up by clicking the Attach to Tree button.

And there you go. You’ve made a new discovery and successfully attached the source to people in your family tree!

BONUS TIP

Now since in this conversation with the AI Research Assistant all the children listed in the results are already in the family tree, I might logically take the conversation further as I would with other chatbots with something like:

Based on what is already documented in the family tree, how likely is it based on what you know about George and his wife that there are other children?

Here’s the answer I received:

“Assessment of Potential Additional Children of George Russell – Based on the existing documentation, there are no indications of additional children beyond those already recorded. George Russell and his wife, Mary Vail, had a total of nine children, all of whom are documented. Therefore, it is unlikely that there are other children not already accounted for.”

And this brings us to my bonus tip that will ensure your success with the AI Research Assistant. This answer from the assistant says that all these children are documented, and therefore it is unlikely that there are more.

However, a human genealogist can scrutinize and evaluate the known information and come up with a much better and more accurate answer. In this case, the reason there are no other children beyond George Russell Jr born in 1814, is that George Russell Sr. DIED in 1814!

How did it miss that?

Because this is just an experiment. We have to remember this isn’t a magic bullet, it’s a TOOL.

The AI Research Assistant is being trained every day. It has a long way to go before it can become an expert level genealogist.

Does that mean we shouldn’t use it? No! It just means we need to understand the limitations, take advantage of what it can do, and keep using our own brainpower for all analysis and final decisions about our tree.

I even followed up the conversation with this:

Did you notice that George Russell died in 1814? Therefore, he could not have fathered children beyond that date.

The Assistant dug a deeper hole with its answer:

“Clarification on George Russell’s Children – George Russell died on May 21, 1814. Therefore, he could not have fathered any children after this date. His last known child, George Russell Jr., was born on June 30, 1814, which is after George Russell’s death. This indicates that the information about George Russell Jr. being a child of George Russell is incorrect, as he could not have been born after his father’s death.”

Don’t let this discourage you. Let it be a powerful reminder that this technology is evolving, it takes things VERY literal. It doesn’t analyze like you and I do.

All that being said, the AI Research Assistant has a lot to offer, and we won’t be replaced anytime soon by AI.

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