Technology has come a long way from the days of bulky, unwieldy machines and hours spent on executing the simplest of tasks. Now, robots can write articles for news websites, and photographs can be turned into animated videos of people who are long gone. And it is all thanks to Artificial Intelligence.
Video clips of Bhagat Singh, Swami Vivekananda and several others have now surfaced on Twitter. These are hitherto unseen visuals, based on well known photos of these personalities show them looking into the camera, at times cocking their heads or smiling softly. And perhaps most importantly, the videos have been created in today's world.
Now, we are no stranger to video editing or unfortunate efforts at photoshopping on social media. But these short clips were not made by tweaking older videos. Rather, as per Twitter user Keerthik Sasidharan who shared the clips on Twitter, they were formed by taking a photo of each individual and running it through the Heritage AI algorithm.
Take a look at the videos:
For the unitiated, the initiative comes from the online family tree service MyHeritage and is known as Deep Nostalgia. According to their site, the technology was licensed by MyHeritage from D-ID, a company specializing in video reenactment using deep learning. Anyone can utilise it to "animate the faces in your family photos" and experience their family history in a new and unique manner.
Note that the clips have no audio and tries to distance itself from "deepfake" clips of celebrities or indeed any other personality without their permission.
The videos take a few seconds to process, and can be used for free to a certain extent. While all individuals can animate several initial photos for free, those who have a subscription with MyHeritage can animate an unlimited number of photos.
