I tried bringing my memories to life with AI and discovered that it works better with dogs than with human hands
MyHeritage received a lot of attention in 2024 for turning old photos into videos with Deep Nostalgia technology, and they are also the company behind DeepStory, which makes images speak by creating striking portraits from photos or paintings. Now the company has upgraded the technology with its new LiveMemory tool.
Like Deep Nostalgia, LiveMemory uses AI to create short animated videos from still images that theoretically show what could have happened right after the photo was taken. It’s an enhanced version of the same feature that makes a photo of a child riding away on a bicycle or a couple on their wedding day turning and kissing. Or at least that’s the pitch.
I decided to try it out for myself as it’s simple enough to use if you have an account and the MyHeritage mobile app. However, with the free trial you only get a few tries and you have to pay to remove the watermark.
To create a LiveMemory, upload the photo you want to see transformed. A few minutes later, you will receive an email from MyHeritage with the video. To spare my friends and family, I started with a photo of myself and a much-missed dog named Malfoy. You can watch the resulting video below.
Ominous nostalgia
I was particularly impressed with how much the technology has improved over Deep Nostalgia. The movements of my head and Malfoy’s head and body are quite realistic, and his tail, which is not shown in the photo, looks exactly like his actual tail. Even my wry expression is well noted, as the AI still had to pass for the video.
That said, I don’t consider myself wide-eyed, and while Malfoy’s tail looked good, it also looked like it was growing out of the side of his body. We always joked that Malfoy was a dog built by committee in the dark, but even he had his tail in the right place.
I decided to make it simpler and upload a simple portrait of myself when I was about a year old. You can see how that went below.
Boy without a leg
Again, the expressions are great; it seems like I really enjoy a joke, and my head and neck move like a real person. On the other hand, the AI doesn’t seem to realize that the young child in the image definitely wouldn’t have that many teeth in his mouth. Those teeth apparently stole all the digital bones from my hands. Watching my clay-like fingers squish each other and occasionally intertwine like monstrous tentacles is more likely to induce nausea than nostalgia.
Compare that to MyHeritage’s official launch video, seen below. You can see that even if there will be a lot of videos that people don’t like, the videos that rank well will be very popular, just like Deep Nostalgia. Maybe just make sure you don’t use photos where the hands are clasped, like mine.
