AI for Genealogy: Complete Guide to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini & Perplexity for Family History Research

Discover which AI assistant to use for every genealogy challenge! Learn the exact prompts that crack brick walls.

Meet your complete AI research team: ChatGPT for creative brainstorming, Claude for document analysis, Gemini for pattern recognition, and Perplexity for current resources. This episode reveals which artificial intelligence tool works best for specific family history problems and provides word-for-word prompts you can copy immediately.

What You'll Learn:

• ChatGPT's creative research strategies for stuck genealogists
• Claude's document detective skills for timeline analysis
• Gemini's pattern recognition for migration and naming research
• Perplexity's real-time resource discovery capabilities
• The complete Four Horsemen workflow for solving brick walls
• Exact prompt templates for each AI genealogy assistant

Featured Case Study: Listen to the complete breakdown of how all four AI tools solved Maria's 3-year Italian immigrant mystery in just 2 weeks, leading from a missing 1910 Boston census record to discovering her great-grandfather's Colorado railroad career and restaurant business.

Key Topics Covered:

• AI genealogy research strategies
• Family history brick wall solutions
• ChatGPT genealogy prompts
• Claude document analysis
• Gemini historical context research
• Perplexity genealogy resources
• Italian immigrant research
• Railroad worker genealogy
• German immigrant naming patterns
• Census record analysis
• Military record research
• Immigration pattern analysis

Episode Highlights: ✓ Why different AI chatbots excel at different genealogy tasks ✓ Real success stories from listeners in 12 countries ✓ The "verification sandwich method" preview ✓ Step-by-step Antonio case study walkthrough ✓ Listener homework: #FourHorsemenChallenge

Copy-Ready Prompt Templates:

ChatGPT Creative Brainstorming: "I'm researching [specific person with details] and I'm stuck because [specific problem]. What are some creative reasons this might have happened, and what types of records should I search that I might not have thought of? Please think outside the box."

Claude Document Analysis: "Here's everything I know about [person]: [paste all information]. Can you help me create a timeline, identify any gaps or inconsistencies, and suggest what types of records might fill in the missing pieces? Please point out anything that doesn't make sense."

Gemini Historical Context: "I'm researching [specific situation] and need help understanding the broader historical and cultural context. Here's what I know: [your information]. Can you help me understand patterns and connections I might be missing? What cultural or historical factors should I consider?"

Perplexity Current Resources: "I need current information about [specific records or resources]. What's available, where can I access it, and what's the current process for [specific research task]? Please include recent updates or changes."

Golden Rule Reminder: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. These tools help y

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Transcript

Picture this, you're staring at a faded, handwritten census record from 1890. The ink is smudged, the handwriting looks like chicken scratch, and you're pretty sure that blob could be either Johnson or Jameson. And it matters, because this might be your missing great-great-grandfather. You've been squinting at this thing for 20 minutes. Your eyes are watering, and you're about to give up when suddenly, you remember something. You've got four digital research assistants sitting right there on your computer, with their own special talent for solving exactly this kind of problem. By the end of today's episode, you'll know exactly which AI assistant to call on for any genealogy challenge you face. And I'm going to give you the exact prompts I use every single day. Plus, I'll walk you through a complete brick-wall breakthrough that happened just last week using all four tools together. Welcome back to Ancestors and Algorithms, where family history meets artificial intelligence. I'm your host, Brian, and if you're just joining us, we're the podcast that teaches you practical, safe ways to integrate AI tools into your genealogy research. That's exactly what today is about. We're meeting your complete research team, what I like to call the four horsemen of genealogy AI. These are the four AI tools that have completely transformed how I approach brick walls. And by the time we're done here, you'll know exactly when and how to use each one. Plus, you'll have word-for-word prompts you can copy and paste immediately. So, So, let me tell you about the day I realized I needed more than one AI assistant. This was about three months into my daily genealogy practice, and I was feeling pretty confident about using ChatGPT for everything. I was working on a particularly stubborn brick wall, my great-grandmother Sarah, who seemed to have vanished from all records between 1920 and 1940. I mean completely vanished. She was there in the 1920 census, living in Chicago with her husband and three kids. Then, nothing. No 1930 census record, no death certificate, no divorce papers, no remarriage records. It was like she just evaporated. I've been using ChatGPT for everything, just throwing different questions at it, hoping something would stick. And ChatGPT was helpful, don't get me wrong. It gave me lots of suggestions. Check immigration records, look for name variations, search neighboring counties, All good advice. But I was starting to feel like I was using a Swiss Army knife when what I really needed was a full toolbox. The breakthrough moment came when I was complaining to my cousin Dave about this brick wall. Now, Dave's a contractor and he said something that just clicked. You know, you wouldn't use the same tool for every job on a construction site. You've got your hammer for nails, your screwdriver for screws, your level for checking things are straight, Maybe you'd need different AI tools for different genealogy jobs. That hit me like a lightning bolt. What if different AI tools were actually better at different types of genealogy tasks? What if I was trying to use a screwdriver when I needed a hammer? So I spent a week, a full week, testing the same genealogy challenges across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. I threw everything at them. I? Illegible documents, timeline analysis, research strategy planning, fact checking conflicting sources, translation translation help, and even recognition in naming conventions. And you know what I discovered? Each one had its own genealogical superpower. It wasn't just that they gave different answers. They approached problems from completely different angles. ChatGPT was like my creative brainstorming buddy. Claude was like having a meticulous research librarian. Gemini was like a cultural historian who could see the big picture. And Perplexity was like having a current day research assistant who always knew where to find the latest information. That's when I started thinking of them as my four horsemen. Each one bringing something unique to the research battlefield. And here's the thing that really matters. It's my golden rule. AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. Each of these assistants have different strengths. Just like having research partners who specialize in different areas. Now, Now, before we dive into each horseman, let me set your expectations. I'm not going to tell you one is better than the others. That's like asking whether a hammer is better than a screwdriver. It depends entirely on what you're trying to accomplish. Instead, Instead, I'm going to show you what each one excels at, give you the exact prompts I use with each one, and teach you how to use them together like a professional research team. Let me introduce you to your new research squad. Horseman number one is, of course, my go-to ChatGPT. ChatGPT is like that friend who's great at brainstorming. You know the one. You present them with a problem, and they come up with 15 different angles you never thought of. Their mind just works differently, and they see possibilities everywhere. Here's what makes ChatGPT special for genealogy. It's incredibly creative at suggesting research strategies and thinking outside the box. When you're completely stuck, when you've searched everywhere you can think of, ChatGPT helps you think of new places to look. Not what you'll find there. That's important, but where to look. Let me give you a real example from my Sarah research. I was at my wit's end, so I opened up ChatGPT and typed, my great-grandmother Sarah disappeared from records between 1920 and 1940. She was married, had three kids, lived in Chicago. What are some reasons this might happen, and where should I look? Now, I expected maybe three or four suggestions. ChatGPT came back with 12 possibilities I hadn't considered. Some of them were obvious once I saw them, like, maybe she remarried and took a new name, or maybe she was living with relatives under their surname. But others were creative leaps that opened up entirely new research paths. For instance, ChatGPT suggested checking naturalization records for her husband, thinking maybe the family had moved for citizenship reasons. It suggested looking into industrial accident records. Apparently, 1920 Chicago had a lot of workplace injuries that might not show up in regular death indexes. It even suggested she might have been committed to a mental institution, which sounds harsh, but was unfortunately common for women experiencing postpartum depression or other mental health challenges back then. The key with ChatGPT is how you ask the question. Here's my go-to template, and I want you to write this down. Quote, I'm researching, specific person with details, and I'm stuck because, specific problem, what are some creative reasons this might have happened, and what types of records should I search that I might not have thought of? Please think outside the box. End quote. That last phrase, please think outside the box, is crucial. It encourages ChatGPT to get really creative with suggestions. But But here's ChatGPT's weakness, and this is important. It It sometimes gets a little too creative. It might suggest your ancestor was a traveling circus performer when they were probably just a farmer who moved to the next county. I once asked about a missing ancestor, and ChatGPT suggested he might have been recruited as a spy during World War I. "Possible?" Possible? Maybe. Likely? likely, Probably not. That's why we always verify everything with actual records. AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. If ChatGPT gives you ideas about where to look, you still have to do the looking. 

Moving on to Horseman number two, Claude. Now, Claude is your document detective. If If ChatGPT is the brainstormer, Claude is the careful analyst who loves to dig deep into details and help you make sense of complex information. Claude excels at helping you analyze documents, organize research findings, and create structured family timelines. It's It's particularly good at helping you spot patterns and inconsistencies in your research. Things that might be staring you right in the face, but you're too close to see. Here's how I used Claude with that same Sarah mystery. I had gathered about 15 different documents. birth records, marriage certificates, census entries, city directory listings, everything I could find. Instead of just asking for general advice, I fed Claude everything and asked for analysis. I literally copied and pasted all the information into Claude and said, here's everything I know about my great-grandmother, Sarah. Can you help me create a comprehensive timeline? Identify any gaps or inconsistencies? and suggest what types of records might fill in the missing pieces." Clod organized everything beautifully into a chronological timeline. But then it says something that stopped me in my tracks. It said, I noticed there's a gap in residential information between 1925 and 1935. The The 1930 census lists her husband as widowed, but you have her death record showing she was alive until 1945. This suggests either a recording error or that they may have been separated or divorced during this period. I had looked at that 1930 census record dozens of times. Dozens! But, I was so focused on trying to find Sarah that I never really processed what it meant that her husband was listed as widowed. Claude copped that inconsistency immediately. That That insight led me to search divorce records, something I hadn't thought of before, and boom! Found Sarah's divorce decree from 1928. She had moved back to her maiden name and was living with her sister's family under her sister's surname. That's why she was so hard to find. Here's the Claude prompt I'd like for you to write down. Quote, Quote, Here's everything I know about, person, paste all your information, can you help me create a timeline, identify any gaps or inconsistencies, and suggest what type of records might fill in the missing pieces. Please point out anything that doesn't make sense. End quote. Claude's Claude's superpower is that it actually reads and analyzes what you give it instead of just making general suggestions. It's like having a research partner who can hold all the details in their head at once and spot connections you might miss. Claude is particularly good when you have conflicting information from different sources. It can help you figure out which sources are more reliable and what the discrepancies might mean. Now let's talk about horseman number three, Gemini. Gemini is fascinating because it approaches genealogy problems from a completely different angle. If Chagie Bt is creative and Claude is analytical, Gemini is the pattern finder. It's particularly good at handling complex family relationships, geographical geographical research, and cultural context. Gemini Gemini seems to excel at understanding the bigger picture, like migration patterns, naming traditions, community connections, and historical context. It's also surprisingly good at helping with foreign language documents and understanding cultural practices that might affect your research. Here's where Gemini really shined for me. I was working with a German immigrant family, the Zingers, trying to understand their migration pattern from Germany to Wisconsin. I had their ship manifest, some letters written in German, immigration documents, and a bunch of Wisconsin census data, but I couldn't figure out why they chose Wisconsin specifically. Or where exactly in Germany they had come from. I gathered everything and asked Gemini, I'm researching the Zenger family's immigration from Germany to Wisconsin in the 1880s. Here's what I know. Pace at all the information. Can you help me understand the broader historical and cultural context? What was happening in Germany that might have prompted immigration, and why Wisconsin specifically? can you help me understand any patterns in German naming conventions that might help my research? Gemini's Gemini's response was incredible. It not only helped translate key phrases from the German letters, but it also explained the historical context of 1880s German immigration. Apparently, there were agricultural crises and political tensions in certain German regions during that period. Gemini Gemini also explained that Wisconsin had active recruitment programs for German farmers and had established German language newspapers and churches to attract immigrants. But here's the really cool part. Gemini Gemini noticed that the family's German letters mentioned a place called Wurtenberg and connected that to Wisconsin's heavy Wurtenberg immigrant population. It suggested looking for other Wurtenberg families in Wisconsin records, thinking they might have immigrated as part of a community group. That led me to discover that the Zengers had actually traveled with three other families from the same German region, and those families had settled in the same Wisconsin county. Once I knew that, I was able to use the other families' records to fill in gaps in the Zenger family timeline. Here's the Gemini prompt I'd like for you to write down. Quote, 

End quote. End quote. In quote. Gemini is particularly valuable when you need to understand the why behind your ancestry decisions, not just the what. Why did they move where they moved? Why did they name their children certain names? Why did they choose certain occupations? And finally, we have horseman number four, perplexity. And this one might be the most immediately useful for genealogy. Perplexitie Perplexity is like having a research librarian who can access current information and actually cite their sources. What makes perplexity special is that it can search the internet in real time and provides you with current information about repositories, record record availability, and research resources. While the other three AI tools work with their training data, perplexity perplexity can tell you what's available right now, today, and how to access it. This is incredibly valuable because the genealogy world changes constantly. New records get digitized, archives update their policies, historical societies change their hours, websites go online or offline, perplexity perplexity keeps you current with all of that. For example, I was trying to find military records for my great-grandfather who served in World War I. I knew he was in the 23rd Infantry Regiment, but I had no idea what records might still exist or how to access them. I asked perplexity, what military records are available for someone who served in the 23rd Infantry Regiment during World War I, and how do I access them in 2025? Perplexity came back with incredibly specific current information. It told me about National Archives holdings, recent digitization projects I didn't know about. How to submit research requests online, current processing times, and even linked me to recent blog posts about accessing World War I records. It gave me current, actionable information with sources I could verify. But here's what really impressed me. It also told me that the 23rd Infantry Regiment's records had recently been digitized and were now available through a partnership between the National Archives and Ancestry.com. That was information from just a few months ago that I never would have found through traditional searching. Here's the perplexity prompt I'd like for you to write down. Quote, "I need current information about specific records or resources. What's available, where can I access it and what's the current process for specific research tests? Perplexity Perplexity is also excellent for finding current contact information for historical societies, verifying that genealogy websites are still active, and and discovering new resources that might have launched recently. Now, here comes the magic. You don't have to choose just one. I use all four in sequence, like calling in different specialists for the same case. Think of it like assembling a research team where each expert brings something different to the table. Here's my typical workflow when I hit a brick wall, and I want you to try this exact process. Step number one, start with ChatGPT for creative brainstorming prompt. Quote, what are all the possible explanations for this situation? Think outside the box. End quote. Step Step two, move to Claude for detailed analysis prompt. Quote, here's what I know and what ChatGPT suggested. Help me organize this in spot patterns or inconsistencies. End quote. Step Step three, use Gemini for historical and cultural context prompt. Quote, Quote, help me understand the historical and cultural background that might explain these patterns. End quote. Step four, finish with perplexity for current resources prompt. Quote, Quote, based on these theories, what specific records should I search for and where can I find them today? End quote. Each AI brings something different to the table, and together they're incredibly powerful. It's like having a research team meeting where each person contributes their expertise. But But remember our golden rule, and I'm going to say this again because it's so important. AI AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. They help you think of where to look and how to approach problems, but you still need to verify everything with actual historical records. They point you in the right direction. You still have to walk the path. Now, Now, here's your homework for this week, and I'm really excited to see what you discover. Pick one brick wall you're currently stuck on. It doesn't matter how big or It doesn't matter if you've been working on it for three days or three years. I want you to run it through all four horsemen using the prompt templates I gave you today. And don't worry about getting the prompts perfect. Just try them and see what happens. Then I want you to share your experience with our community. Send me an email at at ancestors ancestorsandai at gmail.com. ancestors Ancestorsandai at gmail.com. Tell me, which AI gave you the most surprising suggestion? Did any of them point you in a direction you hadn't considered? Which one felt most natural for your research style? What was the most creative idea you got? One thing I'm hearing consistently is that people are surprised by how different each AI's approach is. They're not just you the same answers in different words. They're They're genuinely bringing different perspectives to your research challenges. It's like having four different genealogists look at your problem, each with their own specialty and way of thinking. Remember, there's no wrong way to do this. We're all experimenting together, learning what works best for your different types of genealogy problems. Some of you might find that Claude's analytical approach clicks with how your brain works. Others might love ChatGPT's creative brainstorming. That's perfect. Use what works for you. But here's what I really want you to remember: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. And now you have four different assistants, each with their own special talents. You're replacing traditional genealogy research. You're supercharging it. So So there you have it: your four horsemen of genealogy AI. ChatGPT for creative brainstorming when you need fresh ideas. Claude for detailed analysis steps when you need fresh information. Jim and I for pattern recognition and cultural context when you need the bigger picture. And perplexity for current resource information when you need to know what's available right now. Next week, we're diving deeper into something that trips up a lot of people when they first start using using AI for genealogy: prompting. We're calling it the The Prompt Whisperer

Getting AI to Speak Genealogist. I'm going to teach you the exact anatomy of a power prompt that gets results every time. Something I call the "Context Loading" Technique that makes AI understand your specific research situation. And my secret weapon, the Verification Sandwich Method, that helps you avoid AI hallucinations and errors. Be sure to check out the show notes for today's episode including all those prompt templates typed out for easy copy and paste. And if you're getting value from the show, the best way to help other genealogists discover it is to leave a quick rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Every Every review helps us reach more family historians who could benefit from these techniques. Until next week, remember: AI is your research assistant, not your researcher. And now you've got four of the best research assistants in the business ready to help you crack any brick wall. Keep digging, keep discovering, and keep bringing your ancestors back to life.