From tenderness to horror: a genealogical service has launched a service for reviving old photos

Family history site MyHeritage has launched a service to bring photos to life using a neural network. The result is strongly reminiscent of "living portraits" from the Harry Potter universe - different users describe it as "touching" and as "a nightmare come to life."

Users immediately began to upload to the service not only photos of long-dead relatives, but also historical figures from Queen Elizabeth I of England to Charles Dickens. The algorithm successfully brought all the images to life - however, some users advise avoiding photos with smiles, which allegedly "look like ventriloquial mannequins from the Twilight Zone" in dynamics.

The BBC notes that the new option comes just as there is a debate in the British Parliament to ban videos based on deepfakes without the hero's explicit consent. In December last year, a fake greeting was published on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II specifically to draw attention to the problem of publicly available and high-quality deepfakes.

The DeepNostalgia service is based on licensed technology from D-ID. “This option is only for nostalgic purposes, that is, to bring photos of respected ancestors to life,” explains MyHeritage. The company emphasizes that it deliberately did not add the possibility of audio to live photos.

What you need to know about MyHeritage

MyHeritage is an Israeli family history platform founded in 2003 that has become one of the largest in the world. It includes semi-automatic compilation of family trees, access to kinship databases and its own database and DNA analysis service. Last year, the number of platform users exceeded 50 million people. Financial indicators are not disclosed, but in 2017 the company's revenue was estimated at $133 million.

What you need to know about D-ID

D-ID is a startup that was founded in 2017 by three people from the Israeli military-technical intelligence unit Unit 8200: Gil Perry, Sella Blondheim and Eliran Kuta. The name transparently hints at the main technology: D-ID, using a neural network, removes information from a person’s photo that is available to automatic recognition systems, without in any way affecting image recognition by people. In addition to digital masking, this makes it much easier for corporations to store photos of people that are no longer sensitive personal data. In 2020, the startup raised $13.5 million in funding in a round organized by AXA Venture Partners with the participation of a number of venture capital funds and Hyundai Motor Company.

Now on the landing page of the D-ID website, a technology for reviving faces from a photo is advertised. The “live portrait” feature licensed by MyHeritage relies on a pre-recorded video “driver” to which the neural network selects elements from a user-loaded portrait. “Our process links your photo to the driver, animating and voicing the characters so that they move, talk, blink and smile,” the company writes.