Online genealogy platform MyHeritage has launched a brilliant AI tool dubbed “Deep Nostalgia” that is capable of animating static, 2D portraits and bringing them to life. As the company explains in a FAQ on the tool’s landing page, Deep Nostalgia leverages deep learning technology from computer vision leader D-ID to animate faces and create high-quality, realistic video footage out of them. While a MyHeritage account is required before Deep Nostalgia can be utilized, all users have to do is upload a quality portrait photo and sit back as the AI tool does its magic.
“The Deep Nostalgia feature uses several drivers prepared by MyHeritage,” the company explained. “Each driver is a video consisting of a fixed sequence of movements and gestures. Deep Nostalgia can very accurately apply the drivers to a face in your still photo, creating a short video that you can share with your friends and family. The driver guides the movements in the animation so you can see your ancestors smile, blink, and turn their heads. This really brings your photos to life!”
“This feature is intended for nostalgic use, that is, to bring beloved ancestors back to life. Our driver videos don’t include speech in order to prevent abuse of this, such as the creation of ‘deep fake’ videos of living people. Please use this feature on your own historical photos and not on photos featuring living people without their permission.”
That said, we couldn’t help but try testing the remarkable technology from MyHeritage and D-ID on a couple of portraits of random people. As the result below shows, Deep Nostalgia seems to work rather well.
