While some companies have an ominous use of deepfakes, others use the technology for more playful reasons.
MyHeritage, a family-run DNA testing company like 23andMe, has introduced a new AI-powered tool called ‘.’ The technology takes your old photos and animation of the people in it, and delivers a complete moving picture, like the iPhone’s Live Photos.
To create this fully automated tool, MyHeritage has teamed up with a company called D-ID, who wrote an algorithm that creates these animated videos from old images. Deepfake technology has often been used to “teach” a computer to seamlessly swap the faces of two different people in a video. However, MyHeritage’s tool uses the deep-learning technology of D-ID to automatically animate old still images.
And the results are pretty nice. Here is an old photo that MyHeritage uploaded to the tool:
And here’s what Deep Nostalgia could create:
Although, if it was an old photo of your deceased family member, you can also see how it might be at least a little weird.
There are some to the technology though. For example, if there is more than one person in an old photo, a user can only animate one person. The animations are also limited to the head, face and neck. So while you may want to see Grandpa wandering around town, it would be nice to see him look around and crack a smile.
To use Deep Nostalgia, all you have to do is log in to the MyHeritage website and upload your photo. The service automatically uses the existing AI-powered photo tools to clean your image. Then it will go to work to bring your old photo to life using pre-recorded movements and gestures.
The service is free if you do not have a MyHeritage watermark on the right side of your image.
Although, free often has a price. DNA testing companies have previously been criticized for concerns about the privacy of data. One of the giants in the industry, 23andMe, had earlier given access to the data he collects from the kits to a pharmaceutical company. Databases created by these originator ventures have even been used by law enforcement to.
If this does not bother you and you want to try MyHeritage’s Deep Nostalgia tool, you can find it.