Animating Photos Like Those on Harry Potter

MyHeritage released some fascinating new artificial intelligence technology to animate old photographs, just like those seen in the Harry Potter movies. I have to admit, it is a bit "creepy" watching an old photo suddenly "coming to life". It's still worth checking out, even if just for the fun of it. Maybe you will feel more like diving in to discover more about your ancestors.

The animated photo comes from a full portrait photo of my father. The animation module picks an area of the photograph where the face is located and crops the rest of it away, animating only the facial areas.

If you are a MyHeritage subscriber, this is a FREE service for you to try out. I had discussed the other two services they have, that of enhancing and colorizing photographs in a past blog. The colorizing is actually not too bad for most photographs. The enhancement module struggles more as it often just finds a face or two to improve and misses most faces in groups.

Is animation really all that helpful in your family history work?

If you are more into finding new ancestors through research, you may find this technology distracting. However, if your emphasis at this time is to provide "discovery experiences" for your less than interested family members, this could be one of those little “can openers” to get them excited to learn more about their ancestors.