You’ve heard of deep fakes: where someone with the help of an AI digitally pastes one face onto another person’s actions. It’s incredibly eerie all on its own, but when we’re talking about one living face getting plastered on another, there’s a level of “weird, but fine” there. It’s a little more complicated when the deep fake technology is being used to create “deep nostalgia” and bring long-dead relatives and famous figures back to digital “life.”
Deep Nostalgia is a service from the genealogy website MyHeritage (which is crashing pretty hard right now due to everyone using this, so don’t be surprised if that link takes you to an error page) and was launched late in February. The service uses a technology called Deep Learning to transform still pictures into eerily alive moving images. Just input an old photo of a departed loved one and … there you go.
#MyHeritage re-animated my grandma Anny (here 16 years old in 1936) and now I’m crying tears of joy, hope, thankfulness, longing & regrets 😍😢💔 pic.twitter.com/uXtjBz2UZV
— Susanne Wosnitzka 🍹 (@Donauschwalbe) February 27, 2021
And so of course, folks are using this to bring famous figures back to life and I have to say, it’s kind of incredible seeing people like Frederick Douglass, Oscar Wilde, Harriet Tubman, Alfred Einstein, and many more “come back to life.”
Frederick Douglass, the mighty abolitionist, was the single most photographed person in the United States during the nineteenth century. Here’s how he might’ve looked in motion. Brace yourself and press play. pic.twitter.com/HOxDK7jGyh
— La Marr Jurelle Bruce (@Afromanticist) February 28, 2021
Haven’t we always wanted to come face to face with Oscar Wilde? Now we can and see him blink! #MyHeritage #OscarWilde pic.twitter.com/xV8PgOE1E1
— Ian McKellen (@IanMcKellen) March 1, 2021
Harriet Tubman. pic.twitter.com/4NfF4Xk7Aa
— Adeniyi Sonoiki (@_adeniyiS) February 28, 2021
#MyHeritage Science
A. Einstein pic.twitter.com/FR05iCVhaS— Atelier Parisgraphe (@parisgraphe) February 28, 2021
Queen Liliʻuokalani brought back to life with #DeepNostalgia pic.twitter.com/BLQGO7QDk6
— Keahi (@Keahiio) March 1, 2021
.@MyHeritage‘s #DeepNostalgia feature is but a dream within a dream. pic.twitter.com/SInktJJYYO
— Bizzarro Bazar (@BizzarroBazar) February 28, 2021
There are certainly detractors to this kind of digital resurrection. I’ve seen the words “uncanny valley” a lot in response to some of these going viral, but it’s so fascinating to me because the technology genuinely makes these people look alive and real. And to be fair, for a lot of folks, that’s incredibly creepy. It’s like walking through the halls of Hogwarts with all the living paintings … if they start talking, we’ve probably gone too far.
What’s also fun is that users figured out that the faces they submit didn’t have to be just photographs, and those results are even wilder.
Like everyone else, we’ve tried the #MyHeritage animation app… this is one of our best known paintings brought to life… 😳 pic.twitter.com/AGrheKMP0K
— The Cromwell Museum (@MuseumCromwell) March 1, 2021
This thing is too much fun – Early Dynastic statue from Mari at the Louvre #MyHeritage #DeepNostalgia pic.twitter.com/YsOAIgVbpB
— George Heath-Whyte (@GHeathWhyte) February 28, 2021
No snark today, just Jane the Quene, brought to life… #myheritage pic.twitter.com/eEw0qh1FFa
— Snarky Jane Seymour (@SnarkyJane) March 1, 2021
I think I may prefer the painting to the enlivened photographs, they’re not quite as ghostly and more just … magical.
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
Amazing technology! #MyHeritage #DeepNostalgie pic.twitter.com/4HPosJ9ysK
— Edward Gross (@surgderm) March 1, 2021
Generated with MyHeritage.#DeepNostalgia pic.twitter.com/gNX3wLHsS8
— Andrey Frolov (@kznsq) February 27, 2021
I simply had to do this: the wives of Henry VIII. A thread. #DeepNostalgia https://t.co/LRonayDw6l pic.twitter.com/df7v3ybOXz
— Megan Courtman (@CrypticMeg) February 28, 2021
Then again … sometimes technology can go too far.
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
What do you think? Is this new tech creepy or awesome or a little bit of both? Who would you like to see get the “Deep Nostalgia” treatment?
(via The Guardian, images: MyHeritage via screenshots, Twitter)
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