Deep nostalgia, a tool from genealogy firm MyHeritage, captures still images in live videos.
By Umberto Bacchi
February 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Like the animated paintings that adorn the walls of Harry Potter’s school, a new online tool promises to bring portraits of dead relatives to life, sparking debate over the use of technology to turn people into te boots.
The genealogy company MyHeritage launched its “Deep Nostalgia” feature earlier this week, which allows users to turn photos into short videos in which the person in the photo smiles, winks and nods.
“If we bring our beloved ancestors’ faces to life … we can imagine what it could have really been like, and offer it a profound new way to connect with our family history,” said MyHeritage founder Gilad Japhet. , said in a statement.
Deep Nostalgia was developed with the Israeli computer vision firm D-ID and uses deep learning algorithms to animate images with facial expressions based on those of MyHeritage employees.
Some users of the company took to Twitter on Friday to share the animated images of their deceased family members, as well as moving depictions of historical figures, including Albert Einstein and the lost Queen Nefertiti of Ancient Egypt.
“Take my breath away. This is my grandfather who passed away when I was eight. @MyHeritage brought him back to life. Absolutely crazy,” wrote Jenny Hawran, a Twitter user.
While most expressed surprise, others described the function as “ghostly”, saying it raised ethical questions. “The photos are enough. The dead have no say in this,” tweeted user Erica Cervini.
From chatbots to virtual reality, the tool is the latest innovation that seeks to bring the dead back to life through technology.
Last year, American rapper Kanye West gave his wife, Kim Kardashian, a hologram of her late father congratulating her on her birthday and with “the most, most, most, most genius man in the entire world”.
‘ANIMATION OF THE PAST’
The trend has raised all sorts of ethical and legal questions, especially around consent and the opportunity to blur reality by recreating a virtual double of the living.
Elaine Kasket, a professor of psychology at the University of Wolverhampton in Britain, who wrote a book on the ‘digital afterlife’, said that although Deep Nostalgia is not necessarily ‘problematic’, it’s on top of a slippery slope ‘ ‘.
“When people start rewriting history or animating the past … You wonder where it ends,” she said.
MyHeritage acknowledges on its website that the technology may be “a little strange” and that it is “controversial”, but steps have been taken to prevent abuse.
“The Deep Nostalgia feature contains hard-coded animations that are intentionally without any speech and therefore cannot be used to expire any content or to deliver any message,” Rafi Mendelsohn, director of MyHeritage, said in a statement.
Yet images alone can convey meaning, says Faheem Hussain, a clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society.
“Imagine someone took a picture of the last meal and Judas is now winking at Mary Magdalene – what implications this could have,” Hussain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.
Similarly, artificial intelligence (AI) animations can be used to make someone appear as if they are doing things they may not be happy about, such as rolling their eyes or smiling at a funeral, he added.
Mendelsohn of MyHeritage said using photos of a live person without their permission violates the company’s terms and conditions, adding that videos are clearly marked with AI symbols to distinguish them from authentic recordings.
“It is our ethical responsibility to clearly mark and distinguish such synthetic videos from real videos,” he said.
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(Reported by Umberto Bacchi @ UmbertoBacchi in Milan; Edited by Helen Popper. Give credit to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charity arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http: / /news.trust.org)
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