An AI-based feature that helps bring back old pictures to life by animating them is winning the Internet
(From left) The feature changes a still picture into a 10-to-14-second video with the subject looking around
When the first Harry Potter movie hit the theatres in 2002, this writer, then a Class II student, remembers being awestruck by the moving portraits on the walls of Hogwarts, on the back of the Chocolate Frog Card and in the pages of The Daily Prophet. Of course, GIFs are no big deal today, but a new AI-based feature is now helping to breathe life into still images. Ever since it launched in late February, the tool, aptly titled DeepNostalgia and launched by genealogy website MyHeritage, has gone viral, prompting netizens to animate pictures of legends such as Bhagat Singh, Munshi Premchand and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, among others.
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Like several others, when we gave it a shot, our first instinct was to dig out a photograph from the family archives — our late maternal grandmother, Geeta Ghosh’s. In a matter of five minutes, a regular analogue camera-shot snap of our grandmother was converted into a living portrait. While we had chuckled at the humorously captioned videos of public figures uploaded by the Twitterati, the video of Didu (Bengali, for maternal grandmother) truly moved us, as she smiled, blinked and looked around. The 14-second video, which can be downloaded, led to quite an emotional moment between this writer and her mother back in Kolkata in the middle of a busy Thursday. For a daughter who didn’t get to meet her mother before she passed away, and a granddaughter who wishes she had more documented memories with her grandmother, the video, well, evoked a deep sense of nostalgia.
Even if the picture is decades old, the tool does a smooth animation job, although the image quality is vital; low-resolution ones aren’t accepted. While the process took only a few minutes, what we found trying was syncing card details to avail a 14-day free trial. But one can deactivate the account any time. So when will you give it a shot for your Harry Potter moment?
Log on to: myheritage.com/deep-nostalgia or Play or App
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