MyHeritage’s Impressive AI Shows Your Dead Relatives Moving To Pose For Photos
Screenshot via MyHeritage
The moving portraits from Harry Potter now exist in the real world, thanks to artificial intelligence. Online genealogy platform MyHeritage, known for reviving stories in old family photos through color and detail refinement, is now able to animate the faces of your ancestors and relatives.
Its new AI tool, ‘Deep Nostalgia’, realistically portrays faces in still photos to appear as if they were preparing for a shot. MyHeritage uses pre-recorded driver footage and combines it with video reenactment technology, licensed from the AI experts at D-ID, to predict gestures and make faces smile, blink, or move. Drivers are selected based on the composition of the photos.
Before animating the faces, MyHeritage sharpens the images with its Photo Enhancer, as the quality of old photos aren’t usually that great. “This combination ensures optimal results and produces high-quality video animation for historical photos,” the website explains.
One limitation is that the current version of Deep Nostalgia doesn’t let you animate all faces in a photo at once, and you’ll only get to see them come alive one after the other by clicking on each face. This means that your great-grandaunt might appear to be ready for the photo while your great-granduncle might still be adjusting his smile.
Deep Nostalgia allows up to five photos to be animated for free. Beyond that, users will require a subscription. Try out the tool here.
With our new Deep Nostalgia™, you can see how a person from an old photo could have moved and looked if they were captured on video! Read more: https://t.co/ZwUwzJRQ26 #RootsTech #RootsTechConnect pic.twitter.com/LERXhrqiut
— MyHeritage (@MyHeritage) February 25, 2021
This is my great-grandmother, Kathleen. I’ve always felt so close to her even though she died when I was 2 years old. This #DeepNostalgia video brought tears to my eyes to see her move, almost like seeing her as she was posing for this photo. Remarkable! #RootsTechConnect pic.twitter.com/ZRc41JOo3e
— Mike Quackenbush (@mikequack) February 26, 2021
My great great grandmother, Louisa Roakes (1871-1942), animated using the Deep Nostalgia tool on @MyHeritage #Genealogy #MyHeritage #DeepNostalgia pic.twitter.com/mb9b9uQdwi
— Nathan Dylan Goodwin (@NathanDGoodwin) February 25, 2021
Lilly's mother, Minnie Gamache Perras, via MyHeritage photo animation. Our great-grandmother come to life. https://t.co/qjHunuvefW pic.twitter.com/XtLJmM1DkE
— Leaves of Menominee (@LeavesMenominee) February 26, 2021
[via USA Today, cover image via MyHeritage]
