MyHeritage, a company to “discover family history” – as they describe themselves – launched “Deep Nostalgia”, which uses AI to animate photos. Upload an image and the AI produces a GIF that smiles, blinks and moves your eyes around.
It’s based on D-ID technology, and wow, it’s always upsetting!
I’m sure some people will take an animated photo of your touching grandfather. Personally, I find this a) technologically super intriguing and b) too weird. Even MyHeritage notes in its FAQ that mileage may vary in this …
This technology is fascinating, but a little strange, don’t you think?
Some people love the Deep Nostalgia ™ feature and consider it magical, while others find it scary and don’t like it. In fact, the results can be controversial and it is difficult to remain indifferent to this technology. We invite you to create videos using this feature and share them on social media to see what your friends and family think. This feature is for nostalgic use, that is, to bring beloved ancestors back to life. Our driver videos do not include speech in order to prevent abuse, such as creating “fake deep” videos of living people. Use this feature on your own historical photos and not on photos of living people without your permission.
MyHeritage markets this as a way to animate old family photos, but as I understand it, there is nothing to stop anyone from using it to animate a more recent photo. So: How will this be used to troll and abuse people? It will happen, but I still can’t take a chance on the forms it will take.