Slightly Creepy Deep Nostalgia Tool Reanimates Photos Of The Dead With Deepfake Tech
Recently, Microsoft patented the creation of an AI chatbot for a specific person, whether they were alive or not. Now, a genealogy company called MyHeritage has partnered with deep learning and image processing company D-ID to create something called “Deep Nostalgia.” This technology can bring a person's ancestors back to life by running a process that upscales, sharpens, and animates any image uploaded.
Announced at RootsTech Connect 2021, the world’s largest genealogy conference, “Deep Nostalgia” is a licensed technology that uses D-ID’s AI Face Platform in the backend. Essentially, MyHeritage filmed people for a basic set of motions which could then be paired with still photos to animate said photos. You can see what the so-called “driver” video looks like paired with a still image brought to life below.
Gilad Japhet, the CEO and founder of MyHeritage, explained that “Seeing our ancestors’ faces come to life through video reenactment deepens our connection to our family history and is simply breathtaking.” It is also simultaneously a little unnerving, but perhaps that is due in part to the images falling into the uncanny valley. This occurs when people subconsciously know something is off but cannot quite place it. Either way, “the results can be controversial and it’s hard to stay indifferent to this technology,” as the “Deep Nostalgia” FAQ explains.
More at: https://hothardware.com/news/deep-nostalgia-platform-animates-ancestors-with-ai
