RootsTech: What's new from the Major Sites

RootsTech 2025 in Salt Lake City has come to an end. But there are still 503 presentations in English alone available online, so get cracking with watching them.

As is often the case, some of the major players used RootsTech to announce new features and highlighted recent ones, and all the big players have added huge numbers of new records. More details about the new features below.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a common thread among many of these additions. In fact, there were 116 talks with “AI” in the title, compared to 96 containing “DNA”. AI is the new ‘bright shiny object’ that DNA once was. This is true not just at RootsTech: the recent Australasian Conference in Brisbane, Australia (the biggest conference in Australia and New Zealand) had 6 out of the 54 talks about AI, which is about 10% of the presentations.

So, what are the announcements and updates that were made? I’m not including all of them here, just a selection, so here we go.

Last year FamilySearch announced their Full Text Search, which uses AI to transcribe documents which are then searchable. It’s come a long way since then. They originally launched with 100 million images, but now have 1.2 billion images! I’m having fun looking at the Irish Registry of Deeds records, and have been finding some very valuable records that I wouldn’t have found using the old Grantor Index or Townland Indexes. Not only are these records searchable, but there is a transcription provided. Of course, some documents have more accurate transcriptions than others, but FamilySearch are working on being able to edit any errors that AI made in the transcription.

Family Group Trees is another addition by FamilySearch. This allows families to collaborate on their part of the tree and see records for people who are still living, meaning they can share photos and so on, and get rid of living duplicates.

They have also added quality scores on the FamilySearch Family Tree, which depend on the number and quality of the sources, and the quality of the data. Warnings are given when patrons try to change well sourced entries. Further help to maintain the tree in a good shape comes in the form of a clearer change log. Both of these things will improve the integrity of the tree.

FamilySearch have also introduced an AI help chatbot. It can search lots of places in one go instead of you having to do five (or however many) different searches. Further, it remembers your previous questions, so retains the context for follow up questions. There is also an AI Research Assistant, but at the moment it is only for those living in the US and Canada ☹.

Most of these new features are available in FamilySearch Labs (www.familysearch.org/labs) though the quality scores are already available in the main tree.

The full presentation can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/familysearch-global-and-tech-forum-2025.

MyHeritage also made their announcements. Their OldNews site, which they launched last year, now has newspapers from 24 countries, with more content being constantly added.

Some of the releases they have made this year rely on AI, like “My Stories”, which sends you prompts each week and turns it into a book, and Live Memory which creates a short video from a still photo (available through the MyHeritage mobile app). In the DNA sphere they have updated the number of ethnicities they can look at, going from 42 to 79 ethnicities, and they have introduced DNA Ancient Origins.

There were only a few things in my Ancient Origins that made me raise an eyebrow, like 1.4% central Siberian in the Iron age, but on the whole, my Ancient Origins Breakdown is much as I would have expected, from European Farmers and Western Steppe dwellers in the Bronze Age; Continental and Insular Celts in the Iron age, along with that 1.4% Central Siberian; Roman Gaul, Pict and Germanic in the Roman Era; and French, Insular Celt and Germanic in the Middle Ages.

I’m not completely sure how this section (Ancient Origins Breakdown) fits in with the Hunter-Gatherer and Farmer Breakdown they also have, but perhaps I’ll understand more as time goes on. My husband’s results are basically the same groups, just different percentages. It’s not going to make any big difference to anything, and I don’t know how reliable it is, but it’s fun. But I do have one question – what about the Vikings?

The big MyHeritage announcement at the conference was Cousin Finder, which gives DNA level insights without a DNA test. It uses identified Smart Matches in family trees to make the connections.  Of course, it is only as good as the family trees that it links you to.

The MyHeritage announcements in the General (Keynote) Session can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/myheritage-sponsor-segment-general-session-2-2025.

Ancestry’s major new announcement has nothing to do with AI. It’s Ancestry Networks. This allows you to group people by community, shared experience or place. It means you can add people to your tree who are unrelated, but who appear in a common record. The idea is to help you work through your FAN (friends, associates and neighbours) group, gaining more understanding of your ancestors’ lives.

Christa Cowan’s announcement about this can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/ancestry-sponsor-segment-general-session-1-2025.

So, as always, there are lots of things to learn about on RootsTech 2025's website. Have fun watching the presentations!

DISCLOSURE: I am a RootsTech 2025 conference Media Rep and in return for my promotion of the conference I receive a free entry pass and some additional non-monetary perks. My transportation and accommodation are not compensated.

A powerful story by the Keynote Speaker

The General Session on day 2 of RootsTech 2025 featured the keynote speaker, Dana Tanamachi. Dana is of Japanese and Mexican American heritage, and is an artist and designer and has created a wide range of designs. I’m not much of follower of fine arts, in fact I call myself a Philistine when it comes to paintings by the old masters and so on, but I really loved these creations.

She told us the story of her Tanamachi family. A story which she described as being a story about injustice, but one in which she has found hope. A story that illustrates Gaman. This is a Japanese word which means to endure the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.

Along with many Japanese Americans, her grandparents were interned during WWII as enemy aliens. Their story is very uplifting, which I know is a strange thing to say about life in an internment camp in the Arizona desert. And Dana’s story is also inspiring. Rather than attempt to retell the story, which I could not possibly do justice to, I recommend that you listen to it yourself at https://www.familysearch.org/en/rootstech/session/rootstech-2025-general-session-2.

 

DISCLOSURE: I am a RootsTech 2025 conference Media Rep and in return for my promotion of the conference I receive a free entry pass and some additional non-monetary perks. My transportation and accommodation are not compensated.

 

Day 1 of RootsTech 2005

 RootsTech 2025 is up and running.

The first General Session, as always, started with Steve Rockwood, the CEO of FamilySearch International. His talk debuted a new stage layout, coming out into the audience. Steve introduced this year’s theme: Discover.

This is FamilySearch’s aspiration for everyone, and one thing you can do to facilitate this is to add what you do know to the FamilySearch Family Tree. This will allow others discover more about their ancestors.

Next, Ancestry’s Christa Cowan talked about the importance of a FAN club (Friends, Associates & Neighbours) in telling and understanding a person’s life. Not only does this paint a fuller picture of their life, but studying the people in a community can help break through brick walls.

With Ancestry networks you can now document relationships beyond immediate family, including complicated connections like enslavement. Ancestry will include tools to help you group people by community, shared experience, place or time. More sessions on this new feature will take place during the conference. These networks will allow you to tell the WHOLE story of a person’s life.

Unfortunately keynote Rachel Platten, singer songwriter, couldn’t be there in person, but she did attend by video. She talked about her struggle with herself and about her family, and sang one of her songs, “Girls”.

It's not too late to watch the wonderful talks and see the expo hall. Just go to https://rootstech.org.

DISCLOSURE: I am a RootsTech 2025 conference Media Rep and in return for my promotion of the conference I receive a free entry pass and some additional non-monetary perks. My transportation and accommodation are not compensated.

What is in store for RootsTech

 The RootsTech team is always busy planning for the next conference, and the one after that, and the one after that, and so on.

But we know a bit about the 2025 conference. The first of the keynote speakers have been announced.

We have Olympic champions, married couple Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall; artist Dana Tanamachi; and Ndaba Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela. More information about their sessions is available here. I'm particularly looking forward to Ndaba Mandela and hearing about his experiences growing up in his grandfather's house.

I also got a chance to hear Jen Allen (Director of Events at FamilySearch), Jonathan Wing (Creative Manager for RootsTech) and Brandon Beckstead (Logistics Manager for RootsTech) talk about their vision for the future of RootsTech at the 2024 conference. Below is a video where you can learn all about it too.

 

 

Register here to attend RootsTech 2025 to hear these speakers and more. Attending in person in Salt Lake City costs $US129 for all three days, or a one day pass can be purchased for $US79. Attending the Online conference is FREE

 DISCLOSURE: I am a RootsTech 2025 conference Media Rep and in return for my promotion of the conference I receive a free entry pass and some additional non-monetary perks. My transportation and accommodation are not compensated.

Registration open for RootsTech 2025

Registration has now opened for next year's RootsTech Conference which will take place 6-8 March 2025. Once again, it will be a hybrid conference - it will take place in the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City for the in-person attendees, but it will also be available online for those unable to get to Salt Lake City.

The Salt Lake City version will cost $US99 for a 3-day pass, or $US69 for a 1-day pass (earlybird rate, available until 31 October), which will get you access to over 250 live sessions and the ability to visit 120+ sponsors and exhibitors in the Expo Hall. You can also watch the online sessions at your leisure.

The Online pass is still FREE. It will give you 200+ new online sessions in over 26 languages, which include the Keynote sessions, and these will be available all year. You will also be able to "chat" with other attendees worldwide, but this will only be for the during of the in-person conference.

To register for either the in-person or online conference, go here.

While I was at last year's conference I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with three of the RootsTech team: Jen Allen, the Director of Events for FamilySearch; Jonathan Wing, who was at that time the Creative Director for RootsTech; and Brandon Beckstead, the Logistics Manager for RootsTech.

I've broken the interview down into little clips and will post them all on a regular basis. The idea is to keep each video short, since we are all so pressed for time.

The first video is the interviewees introducing themselves and telling us about the team that puts together the RootsTech conferences. Watch and enjoy!

DISCLOSURE: I am a RootsTech 2025 conference Media Rep and in return for my promotion of the conference I receive a free entry pass and some additional non-monetary perks. My transportation and accommodation are not compensated.

MyHeritage Updates

MyHeritage has been busy adding lots of new features over the past months, and announced some additional new features and some coming ones at RootsTech this year.

New Releases

MyHeritage have introduced a new profile page with hints directly on it. This makes it easier to work within the profile and not have to leave it.

You will see on the image above that the profile now has a number of tabs across the top (Details, Matches, Biography, Photos, Sources). The Biography tab shows you a narrative version of the subject’s life, or if you chose “Create AI Biography” you can generate a more detailed biography based on information in your tree. This biography, if the appropriate option is selected, also pulls out information from other trees, and sources, as well as including Historical Context and name origins. If there are photos attached to the person’s profile they are included in the AI Biography.

Person with only a standard biography

Person with AI Biography (note scroll bar to show
rest of AI Biography)

My feeling about this biography is that it is a good starting point for a person, though I would probably build on it from there. But it’s certainly better than the stilted narrative that comes from my family history program.

RootsTech also saw the announcement of OldNews.com, a new Historical Newspapers site. It includes newspapers from USA, UK, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Czechia, and will soon include NZ papers.

The front page indicates that you can browse the publications, but I couldn’t find how to do so. The filters available to restrict the results are publication year or publication date, publication place (country level only) and publication name. But there is no drop-down or other method of finding what publications are available. It would be nice to have the option of filtering by article type, as many other newspaper sites allow, and to have options to sort the results. Playing around, it seems that the newspapers included the UK are limited to Gazettes at the moment, but more newspapers will be added to over time.

OldNews will be available either through its own subscription, or through an “Omni” MyHeritage subscription. The Omni subscription will include all newspapers, a complete subscription to MyHeritage, access to Geni Pro, a one year subscription to Legacy Family Tree webinars, unlimited photo scanning on reimagine app (and soon on the MyHeritage App). It will be priced at 50% of what it would cost to purchase all of these.

You are now also able to share DNA results with a collaborator. The introduction of two-factor authentication (necessitated by the 23andMe breach) made it difficult for people to share passwords with others to view DNA results. Not that anyone should have been sharing passwords anyway. More details are available here.

Coming Soon

We also got some hints of things that are coming soon: MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA collaboration, getting DNA from artifacts like stamps, and a major DNA ethnicity update which will give many more ethnicity groups.

 

Who are you related to?

What do Jane Austin, Shirley Temple, John Lennon, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Agatha Christie and Helen Keller all have in common? They are all distantly related to me, at least according to FamilySearch's Famous Relatives. Well, that is if there are no errors in the Family Tree on FamilySearch. Some of the lines I am fairly sure of, and some I haven’t yet traced back far enough to know for sure if they are correct or not, but it's still fun. You do need to be aware that there might be errors in some of these trees, as not every connection has been verified to a high standard.

The huge reach of FamilySearch (and RootsTech) means that the FamilySearch Family Tree has lots of ancestors for many of us. That allows RootsTech to find relatives with whom we might be able to share family stories or photos, or even famous relatives.

Relatives at RootsTech have identified 2,471 people who registered for the conference (either in person or online) to whom I am related. The closest relative for me are two 3^rd cousins once removed, but you might have closer cousins. They might even be able to help you solve some family mysteries.

If you want a little bit of fun, why not spend some time finding out who you look like at My Look-Alikes. The person it says I look most like (well, of those who have photos uploaded to FamilySearch, is my great-grandmother, Merab Brockbank née Annesley. I have so say, looking at some of the famous people it says I look like, the only similarity I can see is that we have two eyes, a nose and a mouth.

Why not have a look? But Relatives at RootsTech ends on 31 March 2024, so you’d better hurry up.

DISCLOSURE: I am a RootsTech 2024 conference Media Rep and in return for my promotion of the conference I receive a free entry pass and some additional non-monetary perks. My transportation and accommodation are not compensated.