Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little discuss how new AI browsers are changing how genealogists research. They compare OpenAI's Atlas, Microsoft Edge, Google's Gemini, and Perplexity's Comet, explaining which features help family historians most.

The hosts share lessons from the early AOL era that can be applied to the AI era. They also explore Anthropic's new Haiku 4.5, a very fast model that works great for simple tasks like transcription and summarization.

Don’t miss this week's Tip of the Week, where Steve shows how AI can help you write better AI prompts. He uses an example for extracting information from draft cards to show how useful this approach can be.

In RapidFire, they cover new AI features in spreadsheets, major improvements in transcribing old handwriting, and how Microsoft Copilot's new agent store tries to help you with common tasks.

In the News:

01:20 Browser Wars Heat Up: OpenAI Atlas, Edge, and Gemini Compete

16:50 What AI Can Learn from AOL: Avoiding Walled Garden Mistakes

29:10 Anthropic's Haiku 4.5: When Smaller Models Beat Bigger Ones

Tip of the Week:

39:50 Using AI to Write Better Prompts for Historical Documents

RapidFire:

47:19 AI Makes Spreadsheets Easier: Google Sheets vs Excel

54:35 Reading Old Handwriting Gets Better: DeepSeek and Google Updates

01:05:15 Microsoft Copilot Adds Writing and Prompt Coaches

Genealogy and AI Facebook to hit 20k users!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogyandai

An In-Depth Look at OpenAI's AI Browser

https://intuitionlabs.ai/articles/chatgpt-atlas-openai-browser

DeepSeek AI created DeepSeek-OCR

https://www.infoq.com/news/2025/10/deepseek-ocr/

Nearly perfect on handwriting recognition

https://generativehistory.substack.com/p/has-google-quietly-solved-two-of

Global AI Browser Market Size

https://market.us/report/ai-browser-market/

Benchmarking Claude Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet 4.5 on 400 Real PRs

https://www.qodo.ai/blog/thinking-vs-thinking-benchmarking-claude-haiku-4-5-and-sonnet-4-5-on-400-real-prs/

Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5 Brings Enterprise-Grade Speed and Savings to Customer-Facing AI

https://www.cxtoday.com/contact-center/anthropics-claude-haiku-4-5-brings-enterprise-grade-speed-and-savings-to-customer-facing-ai/

Top 10 AI Spreadsheet Tools

https://www.knack.com/blog/top-ai-spreadsheet-tools/

Prompt Coach: Prebuilt agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

https://rishonapowerplatform.com/2025/03/11/prompt-coach-prebuilt-agent-for-microsoft-365-copilot-chat/

Artificial Intelligence, Genealogy, AI Browsers, OpenAI Atlas, Google Gemini, Microsoft Edge, Perplexity Comet, Anthropic Haiku, Meta-Prompting, Spreadsheet AI, OCR Technology, Handwritten Text, DeepSeek, Microsoft Copilot, AI Agents, Document Extraction, Family History, Browser Wars, AI Models

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little explore how Google's Nano Banana photo restoration tool will revolutionize image restoration by integrating with Adobe Photoshop. This move will greatly reduce unintended changes to historical photos when editing them with AI.

Next, they unpack OpenAI’s move to make ChatGPT Projects available to free-tier users, making research organization more accessible for genealogists.

This week's Tip of the Week provides essential guidance on the responsible use AI when editing historical photos using AI tools like Nano Banana, ensuring transparency and trust in historical photographs.

In RapidFire, they cover OpenAI's new Sora 2 AI-video social media platform, Claude's new ability to create and edit Microsoft Office files, memory features in Claude Projects, advancements in local language models, and how OpenAI's massive infrastructure deals are changing the AI landscape.

In the News:

02:43 Adobe improves historical photo restoration by adding Nano Banana to Photoshop

09:34 ChatGPT Projects are Now Free

Tip of the Week:

13:36 Citations for AI-Restored Images Build Trust in AI-Modified Photos

RapidFire:

21:24 Sora 2 Goes Social

27:23 Claude Adds Microsoft Office Creation and Editing

34:26 Memory Features Come to Claude Projects

38:32 Apple and Amazon both create Local Language Model tools

44:47 OpenAI's Big Data Centre Deal with Oracle

OpenAI announces free access to ChatGPT Projects

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes

Engadget: OpenAI Rolls Out ChatGPT Projects to Free Users

https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-rolls-out-chatgpt-projects-to-free-users-215027802.html

Forbes: OpenAI Makes ChatGPT Projects Free

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2025/09/14/small-business-technology-roundup-microsoft-copilot-does-not-improve-productivity-and-openai-makes-chatgpt-project-free/

Responsible AI Photo Restoration

https://makingfamilyhistory.com/responsible-ai-photo-restoration/

Claude now has memory, but only for certain users

https://mashable.com/article/anthropic-claude-ai-now-has-memory-for-some-users

New Apple Intelligence features are available today

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/new-apple-intelligence-features-are-available-today/

Introducing Amazon Lens Live

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/search-image-amazon-lens-live-shopping-rufus

Amazon Lens Live Can Scan and Pull Up Matches

https://www.pcmag.com/news/spot-an-item-you-wish-to-buy-amazon-lens-live-can-scan-and-pull-up-matches

A Joint Statement from OpenAI and Microsoft About Their Changing Partnership

https://openai.com/index/joint-statement-from-openai-and-microsoft/

The Verge: OpenAI and Oracle Pen $300 Billion Compute Deal

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/776170/oracle-openai-300-billion-contract-project-stargate

Reuters: OpenAI and Oracle Sign $300 Billion Computing Deal

https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-oracle-sign-300-billion-computing-deal-wsj-reports-2025-09-10/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Artificial Intelligence, Genealogy, Family History, Photo Restoration, AI Tools, OpenAI, Google, Adobe Photoshop, ChatGPT Projects, Nano Banana, Image Editing, AI Citations, Sora 2, Video Generation, Claude, Microsoft Office, Apple Intelligence, Amazon Lens, Oracle, Cloud Computing, Local Language Models, AI Infrastructure, Responsible AI, Historical Photos

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little review the biggest AI breakthroughs of 2025 so far, from DeepSeek's open-source revolution to GPT-5's unified reasoning model.

Mark and Steve also celebrate FamilySearch's Full-Text Search moving from experimental labs to the main website, covering 1.4 billion records across 4,300 collections plus new summarization and filtering features.

This week's Tip of the Week provides practical guidance on using Nano Banana for photo restoration, explaining when it works brilliantly and when to exercise caution with damaged images.

In RapidFire, they examine competing reports on AI's environmental impact, explore Google's new AI Mode in mobile apps, and discuss the landmark antitrust ruling that forces Google to share search data with competitors.

In the News:

03:44 2025 Mid-Year Review: AI's Explosive Growth in Genealogy

29:08 FamilySearch Full Text Search Is Now Live

37:57 AI Success Stories in the Wild: Real Genealogists, Real Results

Tip of the Week:

47:53 Best Uses for Nano Banana (Gemini Nano): Small Model, Big Impact

RapidFire:

59:54 AI's Environmental Debate: Energy Costs vs. Benefits

1:03:50 Google AI in Mobile Apps: What It Means for Genealogists

1:11:07 Google Antitrust Ruling Issued: Impact on AI Development

Intro to Family History AI by the Family History AI Show Academy

https://tixoom.app/fhaishow

Full-Text Search (must be logged in to use this link)

https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/full-text/

Full-Text Search Leaves FamilySearch Labs

https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/full-text-search-leaves-familysearch-labs

How do I use FullText Search?

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-use-fulltext-search

Responsible AI Photo Restoration

https://makingfamilyhistory.com/responsible-ai-photo-restoration/

WaPo AI Energy Usage, Sept 2024

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/18/energy-ai-use-electricity-water-data-centers/

Google: How much energy does Google's AI use? We did the math

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measuring-the-environmental-impact-of-ai-inference/

Judge orders Google to share search data as part of antitrust ruling --- but Google gets to keep Chrome

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/search-engines/judge-orders-google-to-share-search-data-as-part-of-antitrust-ruling-but-google-gets-to-keep-chrome?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Artificial Intelligence, Genealogy, Family History, DeepSeek R1, AI Reasoning, Open Source AI, Free AI Tools, ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, OpenAI Operator, AI Agents, Beginner AI Guide, Research Tools, Document Analysis, AI Democratization, Context Windows, Deep Research, AI Writing, Browser Automation, Genealogy Research, AI Accessibility, Reasoning Models, AI Education