Have You Tried the New AI Assistant on FamilySearch?
While recently updating my research on my 4th great-grandfather, William S. Nafus, I decided to experiment with the new AI Assistant feature on FamilySearch.
Upon opening the AI Assistant, I was prompted to select a question to be answered:
- Help me find genealogical information
- Who were ____’s parents?
- Who were ____’s children?
- Who was ____ married to?
- What was it like when ____ was alive?
Since I was already familiar with William Nafus’ family, I chose “Help me find genealogical information,” even though I had previously used the experimental labs to locate deeds and tax records. To my surprise, the AI tool found two sources not yet listed on his profile—one of which was a Find a Grave entry.
The other “source” it found was Ancestry’s Genealogical Records, a resource I hadn’t encountered before. Upon closer inspection, this appeared to be a compilation based on Ancestry trees rather than original records.
Curious to see how the AI Assistant would handle a more complex research question, I asked it to identify the parents of James Crawford (L7F6-MWJ). The response was a connection I had previously ruled out: James and Rebecca (Anderson) Crawford. Interestingly, the first “source” cited was one of my own blog posts, Proof Argument, in which I argued that Rebecca Douglas was the mother of the James Crawford who married Martha Knight.
From these initial tests, it became clear that the AI Assistant relies heavily on the research of others (particularly family trees) rather than original sources. As a result, I (currently) consider its findings as hints—useful leads that require careful evaluation before acceptance.
Randy Seaver’s Review
As always, Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has already tried out this feature. In his original post, Trying the New AI Assistant on FamilySearch (First Product)“, he had similar experiences. As a result of that post, he received a response from one of the FamilySearch developers who shared an explanation of the tool along with information about a feature I have not experienced:
One of the features I believe genealogists will love once they realize what it is doing (and we continue to make it better) is the ability to see all of the sources found for a person. We believe this is going to save researchers time because it is doing multiple searches at once and filtering the results.
Randy shared the response from FamilySearch and more of his experimentation in his More on FamilySearch AI Research Assistant (Second part) post