Our takeaway from RootsTech 2026

To tell you, the scale of this annual event felt like a digital pilgrimage for some five million people. Gathering from 235 nations, they sought their kin in the wires. Beneath the surface of the software lies, fundamentally, a sacred mission to try and map the human family tree. This year marked a pivot toward total automation in record processing.

To avoid old struggles with handwriting, researchers use machines. FamilySearch moved its Al-Powered Full Text Search into its primary machine. It uses OCR (optical character recognition) to read every word on a page and the database grew to a staggering 1.2 billion images in only twelve months.

Ancestry joined this movement by adding five million more images to their site. Their tools now identify script from the Revolutionary War era. In all, it is five million images the company added to the digital pile. These machines do the heavy lifting that once broke the backs of scholars.

For, who would save a burning library? Garrick Parr spoke about the fragility of our shared memory with the metaphor that when an old person dies, the building burns down. He reminded the crowd that an old person is like a building full of books. In Oceania, where families traditionally kept their history in chants and spoken words, we have also fully embraced written trees.

Miyamoto Loretta Jensen explained how genealogy works in the islands. It is the foundation of who owns the land. Ancestry decides who marries whom and who leads the tribe. Colonial forces tried to replace these songs with paper and ink and the disruption left a deep scar.

The archive expanded as digital tools began looking like a balm for this trauma. If you do not know the FamilySearch site yet, it records oral histories in villages to build digital trees. This mission involves turning voices into text with high-speed computers. Salvation for these stories comes, predictably, through the marriage of spirit and code.

Now, don't we all want to know the names of those who came before us? Yes, but as we do, sources start to differ. Afiona Faumuina has spent 25 years walking across the islands of Sāmoa. She talks to high chiefs to verify the old oral legends. Her work now connects with global archives through the internet and ʻĀiga (Samoan word for families) in the diaspora can finally see where they came from.

However, when we train and refine our models that we customized for our Pacific Island languages, we are faced to deal with a problem where technology brings with it a set of ethical problems: Large language models might hallucinate stories that never happened. If the data comes only from Western sources, it carries bias. This digital form of colonialism can erase the truth of indigenous lives and we must, therefore, watch these machines with a careful eye.

To plan their search, experts use new intelligence, notably with foundational models such as ChatGPT 5.1 as a partner for solving hard research problems, or Claude Sonnet 4.5, another LLM that can write the stories so they sound like human speech. Gemini 3.0 maps where people lived by reading their old letters. Every tool is trying to find a specific place in the digital chapel.

Then, by looking at clothes, Ancestry can guess the date of photos. It can even guess the location by looking at the buildings. Some tools even make the family tree speak with audio. Machine vision helps us see the past. It turns data into a story.

At RootsTech, relatives allowed people to find cousins in the crowd. Over 660,000 people saw millions of connections last year. The algorithm scans the global tree to find a common Kupuna (ancestor in Hawaiian). People discovered kin living on other continents through the app. It is, indeed, a digital Waka (canoe in Māori) carrying us back to our home.

By linking documented figures, users find their ancestral lines. The Ancestor Connector tool uses 19th-century papers to find people. It links 21,000 individuals to the main tree, and these records cover places like the Middle East as well as the Pacific Islands. Truth is being stitched back together one page at a time.

Tracing her family, Jessica Soho found her records. She shared her journey as a reporter in the Philippines., from where she looks at genealogy as a form of investigative work. For, she was able to track her family across the South China Sea.

In fact, Oceanians see time differently than people in the West. The past sits in Muʻa (in front of them, in Tongan) because they have seen it. Because it is known, they can see it vividly. The future sits in Muli (beyond them, in Niuean) because, as we are walking forward, the future is hidden, it is yet to be seen coming. Ancestors walk ahead to show the way through life and software must render this sacred way of seeing.

Guiding the crowd, 10 emcees spoke. They spoke in Tagalog, Japanese, Korean, and American Sign Language. This effort allowed everyone to feel at home. RootsTech went beyond the English-centric world to include everyone and inclusivity is, surely, a pillar of this digital tabernacle. ASL emcee Katrina Trevenen led the way. By supporting so many languages, the system breaks the old chains.

And guess what? Computers now respect the naming patterns of the islands: They understand that every nation can now tell its own story, with its own names. For, language is the key and, without human oversight, we are just building the Fale (house in Tokelauan) on sand. We can’t stress enough that we cannot let the algorithms run without a guide with a heart and experts warn against accepting every link the computer suggests so, verification is the tithe we pay for historical truth. Accuracy is, however, the goal.

Huri Translations watches these changes with a focused gaze. We see the need for experts who speak the heart languages. While computers can translate words, they too often miss the soul ingrained. Our teams of linguists connect high-speed code and ancient chants. We ensure that your message reaches the islands with respect.

A partner who understands the subtleties of Oceania is essential for Global business and we provide the linguistic stewardship your project deserves. We translate the technical while preserving the cultural. Trust Huri Translations to guide your venture through the Pacific waters. We are the shepherds of your message in the islands.