[Crimson Dynamo]

Deep Nostalgia

A new tool on ancestry website MyHeritage, that allows people to create
deepfake videos of their deceased relatives is dividing opinion.

Youtube video

Youtube video

Youtube video

Travel entrepreneur Becky Davies has very few memories of her father, Peter,
who died suddenly when she was two-years-old.

"My mum doesn't take a lot of pictures, she's just a very live-in-the-moment
type person, so we don't have any videos and hardly any photos," says the
now 33-year-old, who lives near Chester.

Then in late February, she saw the company MyHeritage had launched "Deep
Nostalgia", an artificial intelligence tool that could generate a "deepfake"
video from a single picture and bring photographs of ancestors or the
deceased digitally "back to life".

The tool works by layering the face from the photo a user has uploaded onto
an existing "driver" video of another person, who is acting out a series of
face movements. The video then wears the new face like a mask and artificial
intelligence helps blend the two together to make it look as if the person in
the photo is the one moving.

Immediately Davies knew she wanted to try it. "It was morbid curiosity I
guess".

She describes the experience as emotional. "When I first saw it, I
immediately burst into tears, just because it was the first time I'd ever seen
my dad animated and moving. It was the first time I'd seen him not in 2D
.

"It's a really basic video," she adds. "The innovation within the app makes
his head move to the side and then he looks up and then looks to the other
side, and then does like a little smile at the end… it looks really natural."


"It gave me a bit of a strange comfort because I thought, that's him. It's
almost like, there he is living."

In the four weeks since the tool launched, MyHeritage says it has been used
to create 65 million animations.

"We were actually blown away by the response, by the interest, the
engagement, also the levels of emotion, of people interacting with it," says
Rafi Mendelsohn, company spokesperson.

more below

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...ves-back-life/

i think its good?