EP43: Ancestry's AI Stories, Model News, Scheduled Agents, Goodbye GPTs, AI Slowdown
The Family History AI ShowShow Notes
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://tixoom.app/fhaishow DescriptionCo-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little report from the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference in Boston, where genetic genealogists were adopting artificial intelligence far faster than expected. They then look at Ancestry's AI Stories, which turn a single record into a narrated story about an ancestor, and why the record itself should remain the evidence. The hosts explain why new models solving century-old math problems matter to family historians, as experienced genealogists begin bringing their hardest research problems to these tools, and what the planned retirement of custom GPTs means for researchers who rely on them for their saved prompts.
In the Tip of the Week, Mark sets up a scheduled agent that checks Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, Library and Archives Canada, and other repositories each week for newly released records in the places he researches, and compares how Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini handle the job.
In RapidFire, the hosts cover Claude's memory controls, which can keep one family's research from bleeding into another's, Apple's Gemini-powered Siri, and the calls to slow artificial intelligence development, ending with a reminder that genealogists can already do far more with today's tools than most realize.
TimestampsOpening00:06 Family History AI Show Academy: Advanced Family History AI Course 01:35 Trends from the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference: Adoption Goes Mainstream 05:46 Today's Headlines: A Preview of the Episode In the News07:18 New Features at Ancestry: Document Transcription and AI Stories 11:18 Artificial Intelligence Model News: Claude Fable 5.1, GPT-6 Astra, and Navier-Stokes 20:34 Another Round of Simplification: Claude Merges Chat and Cowork, Custom GPTs Retire Tip of the Week30:05 Scheduling Your Artificial Intelligence Agent: Weekly Checks for New Record Collections RapidFire42:56 Claude Memory: Editable, Project-Aware, and Worth Checking 49:50 Apple's Smarter Siri (Again): Google Gemini Under the Hood 54:03 Calls to Slow Down Artificial Intelligence: Separating Real Risks from Headlines Final Thoughts1:16:53 Episode Wrap
Resource LinksFamily History AI Show Academy Advanced Family History AI Course Registration https://tixoom.app/fhaishow Trends from the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference https://ecggc.org/ New Features at Ancestry Ancestry Brings Family History to Life with New AI-Powered Stories https://www.ancestry.com/c/ancestry-blog/ancestry-news/ancestry-brings-family-history-to-life-with-new-ai-powered-stori Build Deeper Connections with Ancestry's Redesigned Record Page https://www.ancestry.com/c/ancestry-blog/ancestry-news/redesigned-record-page-fosters-easier-discoveries The Science Behind Full-Text Search on Ancestry https://www.ancestry.com/c/ancestry-blog/ancestry-news/ancestry-uses-science-and-ai-resources-to-transcribe-historical-documents/ Artificial Intelligence Model News Introducing Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1 https://www.anthropic.com/claude-fable-and-mythos-5-1 GPT-6 Astra: A New Generation of Intelligence https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra/ OpenAI on the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/ Another Round of Simplification Claude Cowork and Chat Are Now One Claude https://claude.com/blog/cowork-is-now-claude Custom GPT Retirement and Migration FAQ: Retirement Planned for December 11, 2026 https://help.openai.com/en/articles/
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