Have you seen the news that MyHeritage has introduced a new feature: Family Infographics? After seeing the announcement and reading Randy Seaver’s post about it, I decided to try it for myself.
For my first experiment, I created an infographic for my 2nd great-grandfather, Washington Marion Crawford. Although I already had information about him in my family tree, I did not have any photos attached to his profile. When I first attempted to generate the infographic, it failed. However, after uploading the only photograph I have of him, the infographic was successfully created.
One thing immediately stood out: the tool did not use the original photograph directly. Instead, it generated an AI-enhanced version of the image.
Original Photo
Infographic
For my second experiment, I chose my grandmother. Again, I had to upload at least one photo before the infographic could be created. I selected a picture from my grandparents’ 50th anniversary celebration and asked MyHeritage to create a “scrapbook” style infographic.
As with the first example, the AI modified the original image rather than using it as-is.
Original photo
Infographic
Curious how the feature would handle multiple photos, I uploaded several additional images, including:
- her wedding portrait,
- a photo of her with two of her sisters, and
- a family picture from around 1950.
This time, I selected the “quilt” style infographic.
Infographic
Since I have also been experimenting with Google’s NotebookLM to create infographics, I decided to compare the results.
For this test, I generated a narrative report for my grandmother using RootsMagic. I inserted three photos into the report: her wedding photo, the family photo, and the anniversary picture. After uploading the PDF to NotebookLM, I selected “Infographic” and entered the custom prompt:
“Use a quilt block style.”
Infographic
I also asked NotebookLM to generate an infographic from the same source material without using a custom prompt.
Infographic
The timeline-style infographic did a good job summarizing the report, but I was not especially fond of the color palette. Looking back through some earlier prompts, I found an infographic with a more muted appearance that I preferred.
Infographic
Using that as inspiration, I regenerated the infographic with a new prompt:
“Use a scrapbook style with muted colors.”
Infographic
After experimenting with both tools, here are my initial impressions:
- MyHeritage Family Infographics requires at least one uploaded image.
- MyHeritage appears to modify uploaded photos rather than using the originals directly.
- MyHeritage offers a variety of visual styles for infographic generation.
- NotebookLM can create very similar infographic layouts from narrative reports.
- Simple prompt changes in NotebookLM can significantly alter the visual output.
- NotebookLM provides more flexibility for experimenting with styles and colors.
Because I do not currently store many photos in my MyHeritage tree — and because I am already using NotebookLM extensively in my workflow — I will probably continue using NotebookLM to create genealogy infographics.
That said, MyHeritage’s Family Infographics feature is an interesting addition and may appeal to users who already keep their photos and family data within the MyHeritage ecosystem.