Tom and I have done a lot of genealogical research since we retired and we use both My Heritage and Ancestry.  Each one has advantages and disadvantages.  Both of them cost the same – about $10 a month.  There are some things you can do on them for free, but the research that we do requires a subscription.  I usually use My Heritage and am most familiar with its features.  We especially like the tree-building features on My Heritage.  Tom favors the research tools on Ancestry.

With the most recent update of the My Heritage app, they added a feature called Deep Nostalgia.  I have to say I am seriously addicted to this new feature.  It animates photos using Artificial Intelligence.  Since they added this feature I have spent way more time than I should animating old family photos.

The technology takes one of my family photos, identifies a face, and then makes the face move.  The eyes blink, a hint of smile is added, the face turns from side to side.  It is as if I am watching a short video of the person.  It is eerie, exciting, and really fun all at once.  I have watched video after video of my animated ancestors come to life.  I even animated a painted portrait of one of Tom’s ancestors that made it look alive.  Just the enjoyment I’ve gotten out of this feature in the last two days has more than made up for the price of My Heritage this month.  Below is an animated picture of my Grandpa Clymer about the time he graduated from college.

After playing around with it, the Deep Nostalgia feature works best on pictures without teeth showing.  For some reason, the AI has difficulty with teeth.  I also liked it best with pictures of people who are dead.  I animated pictures of my grandparents when they were young and watched them over and over.  After using the feature for over an hour, I discovered I could change which kind of animation it used.  They have a default animation based on the way the face is presented, but you can choose another one with ten different options available.  Once I discovered that, I had to go back and reanimate the pictures again.  These are two of the pictures that worked really well for animation.

I am blessed with a wealth of old family photos and I have them all scanned into the computer.  Using the Deep Nostalgia feature was really easy for me because I already had the pictures loaded into My Heritage albums.  If you are interested in old family pictures and have some you can load into your computer, you might want to consider My Heritage Deep Nostalgia.  For me, the expense was worth the joy of seeing ancestors come to life.