Steve Little, NGS’s AI Program Director, kicks off the 2024 Virtual Family History Conference by uncovering the power of AI in genealogy. Steve’s talk provides perspectives on using AI and how it could revolutionize personal genealogical investigations. Steve paves the way to understanding AI’s broad impact on genealogy and family history and the practical and ethical challenges AI poses for our field while sharing his passion and excitement for this world-changing technology.

Steve Little is a professional genealogist who has completed master’s work in Applied Linguistics, which is the basis of today’s large language models of artificial intelligence. His life-long interests in language, technology, and genealogy provide him with a unique vantage point at the intersection of these domains.

Blaine Bettinger continues the 2024 Virtual Family History Conference focusing on Expanding Possibilities with a panel discussion on AI. Generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT, Bard, and DALL-E show great potential as tools for genealogists. But what are the challenges and limitations of generative AI, and how will it affect both the researcher and genealogy companies? Join Blaine Bettinger and a group of experts in the nascent field of generative AI and genealogy as they discuss and debate some of the issues associated with this topic. We will discuss issues such as copyright, plagiarism, attribution, big data, and more!

Blaine T. Bettinger, PhD, JD, is a professional genealogist specializing in DNA evidence. He is the author of The Genetic Genealogist and the Shared cM Project.