Some of the new features at Ancestry

Trying out a few of the new features at Ancestry that were announced at RootsTech 2026.  I had the Ideas button for a bit but it is no longer showing on my account.  It didn't work very well for my tree and kept suggesting things I already had.  I do not have access to the Transcription tool because my level of subscription is US Discovery(I'm Colonial American on both sides & that level works better for me)   I do have several other of the new tools that were announced at RootsTech.

Ancestry's new Census Hint Comparison feature.
My 2nd Great Grand Uncle Henry Frizzell's census records

Discover Insights of Gallery Images

Hoping this new feature will catch on and help folks add descriptions, dates, image type and locations to their images.  If you have any of the fields blank it will offer Insights generated by clicking on the Insights Button(shown below).

  

Once the insights are generated the user has the option of saving or removing the generated text. I like that it explains how it came up with the location.  It was correct so I chose to save it.

The generated description was also correct.  The picture was of my Dad, with a hospital gown over this clothing so that he could hold his first child.  It did a very good job on this.  You can get an Insight to any of the fields if you clear them and then refresh the page.

The Insights Tool will be a good function to have if you plan on using their new digitization service,  AncestryPreserve. Ancestry delivers those digitally preserved files to your gallery. You will be able to add info to them just as you would any other uploaded image.

Ancestry has also streamlined the adding source citation process.  Hopefully this will encourage folks to add a source since it is a lot easier to do.  It is better to have some type of source citation than NO source citation.  I'm so happy to see this. I've never done change well but this change is something I am all for.

Also the Ancestry AI has been around for awhile.  You can ask it questions and have it interrupt 1950 census data and a number of other files.  The issues I run into with it are when the transcription is riddled with errors and / or my ancestor just out right lied.  Then some of the things it comes up with a not so great because they don't match what I know was happening within the family.  As far as I could tell any corrections I had added were not considered when generating the AI insights.  For me it was better on what was going on in the general area rather than within the family.