Bringing dead loved ones to life
Sep. 19—Plenty of new tech developments can make you wonder whether it's a valuable advancement to society, a benign time waster or something more evil.
In the case of a new tool that lets you turn people in old photos into a short video, it's a toss up between fascinating and downright creepy.
Genealogy website MyHeritage has unveiled a new tool called DeepNostalgia that animates the faces in photographs. It uses "deep learning" developed by an Israeli company.
It accurately creates a short video of someone's face in a photo so you can watch your dead relatives smile, blink and turn their heads.
Creating animations, like the animated paintings that adorn the walls of Harry Potter's school, have been around a long time, but you needed some high-end skills and equipment to do it. The MyHeritage tool is simple to use — find a good quality headshot photo, drag it in and the tool does its work. You can do a few for free on their site before you have to pay a subscription fee.
You can see the work on countless videos posted online — Charles Dickens colorized and animated, Abe Lincoln brought to life as he recites the Gettysburg Address.
"Brought to life" is a bit overstated. The technology is pretty good but can look a bit choppy depending on the photo used.
If you have vague memories of family gatherings where Uncle Lewis was a bit creepy and Aunt Mavis kind of tipsy, you can now animate them and relive those childhood memories you've worked so hard to repress.
Even the MyHeritage website admits that while many find it magical, others just find it disturbing.
And it's raised some questions among ethicists about whether such technology, especially as it improves, may lead to abuses. Political hacks are already out there who splice together speeches from political opponents to make it appear they are saying things they really didn't. But some day most anyone will be able to take a photo or video, accurately mimic the person's voice and have them saying anything they want them to.
Taking an old photo of great-grandpa and having him smile and wink may be entertaining, but you'll never know if it accurately depicts what he was like. Everyone in those old photos worked hard to look stern and not smile, so you can only wonder if they ever smiled and laughed or not.
I remember seeing a few black and white 8mm films of my dad and mom that some of their friends had. It was fun to watch them when we were kids, seeing them at a younger age at a picnic or on vacation.
I occasionally think of my dad, playing with grandkids, telling a deadpan joke, working around the farm. They're good memories with the visions still clear in my mind when I want to pull them up.
But as for taking one of his old black and white photos and having some deep learning tool tinker with it, I think I'll pass.
Tim Krohn can be contacted at tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com or 507-344-6383.
