Deep Nostalgia, a new service from the MyHeritage genealogy website that animates old family photos, has gone viral on social media, in another example of how AI-based image manipulation is becoming increasingly popular.
Launched in late February, the service uses an AI technique called deep learning to automatically animate faces in photos uploaded to the system. Due to its ease of use and free evaluation, it soon took off on Twitter, where users upload animated versions of old family photos, celebrity photos and even drawings and illustrations.
Like most deepfakes – the name of the popular use of this technology to map a person’s face in someone else’s footage – the service is exceptionally good for smoothly animating features and expressions. But it can also be difficult to generate data to fill the “gaps” in what you can see in the source photos, causing a strange feeling.
“Some people love the Deep Nostalgia feature and consider it magical, while others find it scary and don’t like it,” says MyHeritage about its technology. “In fact, the results can be controversial and it is difficult to remain indifferent to this technology. This feature is for nostalgic use, that is, to bring beloved ancestors back to life. Our driver videos do not include speech to prevent abuse, such as creating ‘fake’ videos of living people. “
Not every video created with the service is elegantly animated, or even good enough to be disturbing, of course. An animated version of Ronaldo’s infamous bust, for example, is just as distressing as the static version:
Three years ago, artificially producing a 15-second face switch from Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher took several hours for the Guardian on a powerful desktop computer. Now, the same effect can be done for free with a cell phone and apps like Snapchat, or be offered for free as a promotion for a genealogy website.
And while the automatically produced videos of Deep Nostalgia do not induce anyone to think they are real images, it can be very difficult to distinguish the more careful application of the same technology from reality.
Tom Cruise seems to be a particular subject of choice: in 2019, a music video went viral of comedian Bill Hader being turned into a Hollywood star while he impressed on David Letterman’s show.
Last month, a new TikTok account called deeptomcruise has accumulated millions of views with a series of videos that are, he says, fake versions of the actor speaking to the camera. Cruise counterfeits are so accurate that many programs designed to recognize the manipulated media are unable to locate them.