‘Deep Nostalgia’: New online AI tool brings portraits of deceased relatives to life, some call it ‘creepy’

Like the animated paintings that adorn the walls of Harry Potter School, a new online tool promises to bring portraits of deceased relatives to life, sparking debate over the use of technology to impersonate children. people.

Genealogy company MyHeritage launched its ‘Deep Nostalgia’ feature earlier this week, allowing users to turn still images into short videos showing the person in the photo smiling, blinking and nodding.

“Seeing the faces of our beloved ancestors come to life … allows us to imagine what they might have been like in reality, and offers a profound new way to connect to our family history,” said Gilad Japhet, Founder from MyHeritage in a press release.

Developed with Israeli computer vision company D-ID, Deep Nostalgia uses deep learning algorithms to animate images with facial expressions based on those of MyHeritage employees.

Some company users took to Twitter on Friday to share moving images of their deceased loved ones, as well as moving portrayals of historical figures including Albert Einstein and the lost Queen Nefertiti of ancient Egypt.

“It takes my breath away. It was my grandfather who died when I was eight. @MyHeritage brought him back to life. Absolutely crazy,” wrote Twitter user Jenny Hawran.

While most expressed amazement, others described the feature as “scary” and said it raised ethical questions. “Pictures are enough. The dead don’t have a say,” Erica Cervini tweeted.

From chatbots to virtual reality, the tool is the latest innovation that seeks to bring the dead to life through technology.

Last year, American rapper Kanye West gave his wife Kim Kardashian a hologram of his late father congratulating her on her birthday and for marrying “the most, the most, the most, the most awesome man in the world. “.

‘ANIMATE THE PAST’

The trend has opened up all kinds of ethical and legal questions, notably around consent and the opportunity to blur reality by recreating a virtual double of the living.

Elaine Kasket, professor of psychology at the University of Wolverhampton in Britain, author of a book on ‘the digital afterlife’, said that while Deep Nostalgia was not necessarily ‘problematic’ it was “At the top of a slippery slope”.

“When people start to crush history or sort of animate the past… You wonder where it ends,” she says.

MyHeritage acknowledges on its website that the technology can be “a bit strange” and its use “controversial”, but said steps have been taken to prevent abuse.

“The Deep Nostalgia feature includes hard-coded animations that are intentionally speechless and therefore cannot be used to simulate content or deliver a message,” Rafi Mendelsohn, public relations manager of MyHeritage, said in a statement.

Still, pictures alone can make sense, said Faheem Hussain, clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

“Imagine someone took a picture of the Last Supper and Judas now winks at Mary Magdalene – what kind of implications that can have,” Hussain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.

Likewise, artificial intelligence (AI) animations could be used to make someone seem like they are doing things they might not be happy about, like rolling their eyes or smiling at a funeral, he said. he adds.

Mendelsohn of MyHeritage said using photos of a living person without their consent violated the company’s terms and conditions, adding that the videos were clearly marked with AI symbols to differentiate them from genuine recordings.

“It is our ethical responsibility to clearly mark these synthetic videos and differentiate them from the real videos,” he said. (Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi in Milan; Editing by Helen Popper. Please mention the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers the lives of people around the world who are struggling to live freely or fairly.