It’s hard to feel connected to someone who’s been through a static photo. So a company called MyHeritage offering automatic AI-powered photo enhancements, now offers a new service that can animate people in old photos and create a short video that looks like it was recorded while posing and preparing for the portrait.
Called Deep nostalgia, the results of the videos are reminiscent of the Live Photos feature in iOS and iPadOS where video is recorded and stored for a few seconds before and after the shutter of the camera app is pressed. But where Live Photos is meant to find the perfect recording and framework that may have been missed exactly the moment the shutter was pressed, Deep Nostalgia is rather meant to bring still shots, even those not captured on a modern smartphone not. .
The conversion process is completely automatic. Users simply need to upload a photo to the MyHeritage website where it will first be sharpened and enhanced to not only enhance the quality of the final animation, but also the deep learning algorithm (created by a company called DONE) to do his thing. The orientation of the person in the photo is analyzed to determine the direction of their head and eyes, and then a corresponding driver video is selected – a modern recording of a face making movements as if it were for a photo. selected to guide how the photo is animated.
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The results are terribly lifelike, and manage to preserve the aesthetics of the original recording to sell the effect of the recording of the video taken during the recording of the photo. Deep nostalgia, however, has some limitations. In a photo with multiple subjects, users are asked to select only one person they want to see animated because the tool, at least in its current form, cannot bring the whole picture to life. The animations are also limited to the head and neck of the subject. If it’s a chance they play tennis, you will not see them swinging to the ball.
The MyHeritage Website users must log in before using Deep Nostalgia. But once done, you can animate up to five different photos for free. After that, you have to pay for a subscription to bring other friends and family back to life. Is it a little creepy? Yes, but at the same time it’s another fascinating application of AI and deep learning that feels right out of science fiction. And while the service is limited today, it won’t be long before AI can bring an entire photo to life, and a static moment at your grandparents’ wedding can easily become a video of the family.