Myheritage Now Lets You Animate Old Family Photos Using Deepfakery

AI-enabled synthetic media is being used as a tool for manipulating real emotions and capturing user data by genealogy service, MyHeritage, which has just launched a new feature — called ‘deep nostalgia‘ — that lets users upload a photo of a person (or several people) to see individual faces animated by algorithm. The Black Mirror-style pull of seeing long lost relatives — or famous people from another era — brought to a synthetic approximation of life, eyes swivelling, faces tilting as if they’re wondering why they’re stuck inside this useless digital photo frame, has led to an inexorable stream of social shares since it was unveiled yesterday at a family history conference…  Rosalind Franklin brought to life with #DeepNostalgia pic.twitter.com/DNQ3kzuf6h — Dr Adam Rutherford (@AdamRutherford) 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 This is my great-grandmother, Kathleen.