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.
Timestamps:
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39:50 Using AI to Write Better Prompts for Historical Documents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
Resource Links:
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/
Tags:
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
