After AI brings pics of Bhagat Singh to life, many similar apps come up in the market

Keerthik Sasidharan, the author of The Dharma Forest, put up animations of freedom fighters and historical figures like Bhagat Singh, Swami Vivekananda, Lokmanya Tilak, Kasturba Gandhi, Aurobindo and Munshi Premchand. The GIFs, created from their photos, started moving once you hit the play button and they look exceptionally real. He said that he ran the images through a technology called the 'Heritage AI algorithm' and reanimated them.

For those unaware, the videos had a very real-life like quality in them. The historical figures moved, blinked and smiled - leaving netizens amused, all in praises for the “amazing technology”. According to reports, the software comes from the online family tree service MyHeritage. It can recreate lifelike motion from just a single frame of photo or painting. You can also add facial expressions like a wink, smile, nod, and turning head the portrait photos using machine learning. Further, the user can also select pictures from a group photo too.

Kind of surreal to take a photo of the singularly inspiring Bhagat Singh -- a revolutionary voice in 1920s India, who was hung by the British in 1931, at the age of 24 -- run it through the Heritage AI algorithm, and see him reanimated. pic.twitter.com/CfC0Gu6Gxk

— Keerthik Sasidharan (@KS1729) February 28, 2021

The tweet series includes videos of many famous people like Chandrashekhar Azad, Aurobindo Ghosh, Kasturba Gandhi, Lokmanya Tilak, etc. Later, many people tried the same on different historical figures as well.

AI TOOL “DEEP NOSTALGIA” LETS YOU REANIMATE YOUR OLD PHOTOS

Deep Nostalgia

The AI that Deep Nostalgia leverages to attain these animations is a bit like the ones used in Deep Fakes. #Vitti #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #DeepLearning #DeepNostalgia #DeepFake #MyHeritage pic.twitter.com/OMUxeHOVmA

— Vitti AI (@Vitti_AI) March 2, 2021

The AI bringing-pictures-back-to-life segment has become an instant hit

After the series launched, the idea became an instant hit with netizens. Only yesterday, using an app named Wombo, a cousin of mine changed my picture to rocking on the song Tunak Tunak. Memes of Popular TV show FRIENDS jamming to Who Let The Dogs Out appeared on various social media. A popular Instagram celebrity also showed an emotional video of his parents being able to see his grandparents moving. Another app, Speak Pic, turns text into audio to make a picture talk.

Many new apps have come into the market that simply takes a picture and can make the features of the person move. Currently, the feature looks like it is human-specific. (If anyone knows how I can see my dog move in a picture, well, let me know in the comments.)

Snapchat did it before it was cool? Technically no, but yes.

The entire section, called, Moving Pictures, saw its first start when Snapchat first included people-mouth on daily objects, for eg a banana.  But that is not exactly what these apps are doing, they are only making a small video out of the entire picture and facial features that help in understanding how these people looked in their own times.

Especially to a generation before us, the AI tool, helps them see their parents, grandparents again, who they have nothing but pictures of. Thus, the feature is cool and many new apps have gotten a hike after the launch of MyHeritage.