Our brains, as sophisticated as they are, have a prehistoric response to things that are almost human, but not quite. When you see your grandmother or Mark Twain come alive, there’s something fascinating about it.”įascinating – and yes, a little frightening. “The draw here is that visual imagery is visceral and compelling and we respond to it,” says Hany Farid, associate dean and head of the School of Information at UC Berkeley. Responses to the Deep Nostalgia images – tears at seeing a grandmother’s smile, an eerie feeling of connection to a long-dead historical icon – knock on a mysterious emotional wall between us and this type of rapidly-evolving technology. Together it creates, if not an entirely natural effect, than a deeply arresting one. It also makes up for little moments that aren’t in the original photo, like the reveal of teeth or the side of a head. Users are invited to supply old photos of their loved ones, and the program uses deep learning to apply predetermined movements to their facial features. His animated image and others like it – at the same time unsettling, emotional, and a bit fantastical, are made possible by Deep Nostalgia, an artificial intelligence program from the genealogy platform MyHeritage.Īs far as AI-animated images go, the technology behind these Harry Potter-esque photos isn’t particularly complex. And yet, there he is, blinking and nodding as if he were just alive yesterday, as if he hadn’t died in 1895, years before film recording became commonplace. It’s hard to explain the mix of emotions that spark upon seeing a photo of Frederick Douglass come alive with the click of a button.
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