Sharing AI-Assisted Genealogical Biographies on Ancestry

For years, my Ancestry tree has contained the records documenting my ancestors' lives—census records, marriage records, deeds, military files, and obituaries. Those records are invaluable, but they don't always tell the story of the person behind them.

Recently, I've begun adding something new to my tree: evidence-based biographies prepared from my documented research.

These biographies begin in RootsMagic, where I maintain my master genealogy database and source citations. After generating a narrative report from RootsMagic, I use generative AI as an editorial assistant to improve organization, readability, and narrative flow. The result is a biography that is easier to read while remaining grounded in documented evidence.

Transparency Matters

As AI becomes more common in genealogy, one question keeps surfacing:

How do readers know what was written by AI and what is supported by historical records?

Rather than simply uploading an AI-edited biography, I decided to create a document that preserves the entire process.

Each biography includes:

• A research summary
• An explanation of how the document was prepared
• An AI-assisted biography
• An appendix listing the sources used
• The original RootsMagic narrative report generated from the same research

Including the original narrative report allows future researchers to compare the polished biography with the software-generated narrative. Both are based on the same underlying research, providing transparency into how the final document was created.

Why Share It on Ancestry?

Ancestry allows users to upload PDF documents to an individual's Gallery. I think this makes it an ideal place to preserve more than just records.

Future descendants may not have access to my RootsMagic database, but they can read a biography that brings together the evidence into a coherent story. They can also review the supporting source list and the original narrative report if they wish to dig deeper.

Instead of finding dozens of disconnected records, they can begin with a readable biography and then explore the evidence behind it.

AI Is an Editor, Not a Researcher

One principle guided the preparation of these biographies:

AI was used to improve the writing—not to perform the research.

The research, source citations, and genealogical conclusions remain my own. AI simply helped transform a software-generated narrative into a more engaging account of an ancestor's life.

Every factual statement was reviewed against the documented sources before the biography was shared.

Looking Ahead

This is the format I plan to use for future biographies that I upload to my Ancestry tree. My hope is that these documents will preserve not only the facts of my ancestors' lives but also the reasoning and documentation behind those facts.

Genealogy is always a work in progress, and these biographies will continue to evolve as new records come to light. By including both the edited biography and the original narrative report, I hope future researchers will have confidence in both the story and the research that supports it.

Have you experimented with using AI to help write family histories? If so, how have you chosen to document your process? I'd enjoy hearing how other genealogists are balancing new technology with traditional research standards.