Ancestry has spent decades digitizing family records. AI is helping speed it up.

For over four decades, Ancestry has amassed an impressive collection of more than 71 billion family records, including birth certificates and marriage licenses, spanning 88 countries and resulting in 148 million family trees. Historically, the process of collecting, organizing, and labeling this data has been painstakingly slow. Employees and external vendors would often spend months manually inputting information and transcribing records from around the globe. The company's international expansion began in 2001 with a website launch in the UK, but the financial implications of digitizing this vast wealth of information posed significant challenges. Sriram Thiagarajan, Ancestry's CTO since November 2020, noted that the time and costs associated with digitizing these rich resources limited their capabilities. Thiagarajan has been at the forefront of Ancestry's AI initiatives since joining as CIO in 2017, just before the firm Blackstone completed its $4.7 billion acquisition of the company. Since that acquisition, Ancestry has made substantial investments in machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. These advancements have not only expedited the digitization process but also introduced innovative user tools such as AI-driven facial and handwriting recognition capabilities. In 2003, Jackson Reese joined Ancestry as head of digital imaging during a time when the company had only a single person in its imaging department. Reese was tasked with bringing imaging operations in-house and rapidly expanded the team to over 70 within three years. Initially, the team utilized outdated technologies like microfilm scanners to digitize various historical records. Starting in 2014, Ancestry began focusing on AI projects to develop proprietary machine learning models and computer vision systems. This early work paved the way for building algorithms capable of reading paper documents. By 2019, the team had incorporated Google's BERT models to enhance its data extraction processes. Previously, the company relied on domain experts to review new records before they were transcribed and indexed, often requiring multiple rounds of refinement to achieve satisfactory accuracy levels. The emergence of ChatGPT in November 2022 marked a pivotal moment for Ancestry, unlocking new potential to accelerate the digitization of unstructured data such as scanned documents and user-generated images. With AI's enhanced capabilities, Ancestry can now process records in nearly 200 languages with minimal additional training. As of September 2023, the company is leveraging large language models for user-facing applications as well. The Face Match feature, an AI-powered facial recognition tool, was introduced in July 2024, while a document transcription feature allowing users to upload scans for transcription debuted in April 2025. Ancestry's AI Stories, launched in December 2025, provides narrated audio stories about ancestors directly from the database. By the end of 2025, over half of the historical records available on Ancestry's website were generated using AI technology. This shift has dramatically increased the rate of content growth, soaring from 800 million records in 2021 to a staggering 18.6 billion by 2023. Ancestry continues to enhance its AI capabilities, with plans to introduce language translation features in its transcription tools, marking a significant leap forward in genealogical research.