- Title: AI-generated deep fake videos bring your family tree back to life
- Date: 25th March 2021
- Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL VIA ZOOM (MARCH 15, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) RAFI MENDELSOHN, DIRECTOR, MYHERITAGE SAYING: "The MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia tool is, I suppose, the latest iteration in that discovery process, bringing technology to the mass users to help them make that connection with their ancestors and of course with Deep Nostalgia it goes that one step further by introducing artificial intelligence technologies to animate the face and make their loved ones come to life."
- Embargoed: 8th April 2021 11:31
- Keywords: Deep Nostalgia MyHeritage Rafi Mendelsohn animate photos artificial intelligence deepfake family photos historical pictures animated
- Location: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL / UNKNOWN LOCATIONS / EMSWORTH, ENGLAND, UK
- City: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL / UNKNOWN LOCATIONS / EMSWORTH, ENGLAND, UK
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Europe,Information Technologies / Computer Sciences,Science
- Reuters ID: LVA005E5KXXLN
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The technology behind so-called 'deepfake' videos is helping people bring images of dead relatives back to life by animating still photographs.
More than 65 million images have been animated by the 'Deep Nostalgia' technology in the first month since it was made available to users of the MyHeritage app, that helps create family trees, the company said.
"MyHeritage tries to make building your family tree, making discoveries about your family history as easy as possible and we've developed a number of different technologies and many people use us to build their family tree," MyHeritage's Rafi Mendelsohn told Reuters.
"With Deep Nostalgia it goes that one step further by introducing artificial intelligence technologies to animate the face and make their loved ones come to life," Mendelsohn said.
The word deepfake refers to fake videos made using 'deep learning', a kind of artificial intelligence, or AI.
MyHeritage already offered technology to colour black and white photographs and to enhance the resolution of old photographs before giving deep fake technology a chance to do something positive with your family snapshots.
"What people are seeing when they upload that picture is that they see a driver," said Mendelsohn.
"It's actually a colleague of mine who has recorded animations of him making different facial movements moving your head from side to side and smiling and blinking back at you. And it's that driver, it's that animation of a human person, that sits underneath the still image of your ancestor and allows the face to move from side to side, to smile back at you," Mendelsohn said.
As well as family photographs some users have uploaded pictures of famous figures from history and art and shared the animations of them on social media.
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