MyHeritage Launched a Service that "Revives" Relatives and Historical Photos

How many photos of our past do we have, maybe in black and white, that we would so much like to revive? What if I told you that there is actually a way, and in this guide I will explain you how to bring faces to life in photos thanks to Deep Nostalgia?

Genealogy research service MyHeritage has launched a new service, Deep Nostalgia. It is based on a deep fake technology. With the help of the new service, you can "revive" photos of long-dead relatives or just make a fun memes.  Persons who for years stared at their descendants from the pages of photo albums can now turn their heads, look around and smile.

To be clear, MyHeritage is designed to collect information about family ties. On the site, you can create your own family tree, upload photos and documents, or find something interesting in a database already collected by other users.

The system uses patterns of facial movements, which it selects based on the location of the person in the photo, but users can choose the most suitable option themselves. The developers trained the system using photographs and videos of historical figures. Earlier, MyHeritage released a commercial featuring Abraham Lincoln, based on Deep Nostalgia technology.

Now the service literally offers a new look at the relatives whom the user could never have seen alive, and they will tell the story of their family.

Moreover, the deep fake technology itself, used to develop such a service, generates conflicting responses. The fact is that artificial intelligence allows you to replace a real face in a video with any other by overlaying a photo on it in such a way that it is not always possible to see the substitution.

This technology has gained notoriety after being actively used to create fake pornographic videos of celebrities.

Critics argue that the deep fake videos allow spreading false information on the Internet and stirring up conflicts to a completely new level (for example, you can record a video with provocative statements and then embed a photo of a famous politician in it).

The service is rapidly gaining popularity on social networks. Users "bring to life" old photographs of relatives, actors, and other famous personalities.

The company deliberately abandoned the possibility of dubbing the resulting videos so that their brainchild would not be used for malicious purposes. Also on the company's website, there is a request "to use this function to process personal historical photographs, without uploading photographs of living people without their permission."

The basis of the new service, accordingly, was several videos in which MyHeritage employees move in the frame, smile and turn their heads. They were filmed in advance by the developers. Then a photo of the selected relative is superimposed on this video sequence.

When users "played enough" with personal photos, they started uploading famous characters and paintings. And Attila decided to recreate Beethoven.

In these days of cultural limbo, bringing the past to life is becoming addictive - it’s the ultimate retro pastime. First Hadi Karimi colourised and made Beethoven 3D. Now he moves! #DeepNostalgia pic.twitter.com/z3jpRoXPD8

— Attila (@attilalondon) February 27, 2021

One of the users of social networks came up with an unusual application for the service and revived the famous statue of the Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo.

So I wanted to know how the recent #DeepLearning facial animations services do with busts and decided to give that botched Christiano Ronaldo statue a spin. What ensued can only be summarised as #DeepNostalgia --> #DeeplyDisturbed. Sweet dreams! ;) pic.twitter.com/g2J0LV5DAi

— Jan Smeddinck 🇪🇺🌍 (@smeddinck) February 27, 2021

The statue of Ronaldo was installed at Madeira Airport in 2017. The bronze monument by Emanuel Santos has become widely known and has been the subject of many memes. The bust was later replaced.

Continuing the experiments, users began to upload non-standard photos. Meme heroes and actors in unusual poses made Deep Nostalgia work and produce non-standard results.

How it works?

The neural network processes photos using artificial intelligence - it adds facial expressions, head movements and emotions. In the end, the user receives a video that can be saved.

• Go to the site and register.

• Upload your desired photo under Family Tree, Animate Photo.

• Wait while the system processes the image.

• Download the video and have fun :D

It is noteworthy that only 5 photos can be processed for free with watermarks. Next, you need to subscribe to a paid subscription, which costs $ 8.29 / month.

It is reported that all images uploaded to the site are automatically deleted for privacy reasons. As such, MyHeritage does not share user data with third parties.

By:

Maksim H. 

Tallin, Estonia

https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/~015460b5e1ab6cc05c/