From Research to Data with AI 4 of 5: Seeing Patterns—Summaries, Timelines, and Clusters
Andrew Redfern, Fiona Brooker
About this webinar
Use AI to extract, clean, organise, and analyse your family history research. Intermediate level, focused on workflows and data handling; ideal for users managing large research projects; activities include table-building, clustering, and data cleaning.
About the speakers
Key points and insights
The fourth installment of the 2026 Legacy Family Tree series, "From Research to Data with AI," explores the transformative power of artificial intelligence in identifying hidden family patterns. Led by experts Andrew Redfern and Fiona Brooker, this session demonstrates how genealogists can move beyond simple data collection to create sophisticated summaries, interactive timelines, and geographic clusters. By leveraging AI as a collaborative partner, researchers can efficiently synthesize vast amounts of fragmented information—from GEDCOM files to personal letters—into cohesive narratives that reveal gaps in evidence and provide fresh research opportunities.
- Iterative Data Refinement: The webinar emphasizes that AI is not a "one-and-done" solution but a tool for continuous cleanup. By feeding research tables back into AI models, genealogists can identify inconsistencies in place names, resolve conflicting dates across different platforms like Ancestry and MyHeritage, and standardize data to ensure a "clean" foundation for future discoveries.
- Dynamic Visual Storytelling: Beyond text-based lists, researchers can use specialized tools like NotebookLM to generate historically grounded infographics. These visuals offer a bird's-eye view of an ancestor's global movements and major life events, though the session highlights the critical importance of human oversight to correct AI-generated visual errors or emotive language.
- Geographic and DNA Patterning: Advanced techniques shown include using AI to generate latitude and longitude coordinates for master research tables. This data can then be imported into mapping software to visualize migration paths. Furthermore, specialized GPTs can compare multiple pedigree charts as images to extract common surnames and suggest hypotheses for DNA shared matches.
Watching the full webinar is highly recommended for any researcher looking to modernize their workflow and uncover the "story" hidden within their spreadsheets. Viewing the live demonstrations provides a clear, step-by-step understanding of how to prompt AI effectively while navigating the limitations of free tools. To truly master these techniques and access the specific prompts used by the speakers, genealogists are encouraged to explore the additional resources and detailed guides included in the official syllabus. Taking the time to dive into these materials will empower any family historian to turn raw data into a vivid, mapped-out legacy.
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Comments (32)
As always, they were extraordinary!
They cover a lot of detail and make it sound simple.
As always a fascinating and informative look at what can be achieved with AI. I have a lot of work to do to be able to use the knowledge efficiently but without these webinars I wouldn’t be able to use it at all. Thank you so much Fiona and Andrew.
Excellent information, which will need another watch to totally understand. I realize it might take a lot of pages in the syllabus, but it would be helpful to see the entire prompt to totally 'get' what's being suggested for each learning project. It goes by too quickly in the slides to read the prompts.
Another really informative session from Fiona and Andrew. The timeline and mapping options are of particular interest in livening up data rather than me having a tree of just desiccated data.
I LOVE this series of Webinars! I learn so much! I honestly did not know that there were so many resources available! I can’t wait to get started!
The best part of this series are the exercises, I appreciate having the opportunity to try my hand at them and then see how the instructors really got the results that I had difficulty with or couldn't successfully complete. Thank You.
Andrew and Fiona have such great information. I always learn a lot. It's worthwhile to watch them working "live" with their screens and watch how they do their tasks. It's almost as if they are operating MY computer, sitting next to me.