MyHeritage's LiveStory Feature Lets Relatives 'Talk' in Old Pictures

Speaker 1: Remember all those talking paintings in Harry Potter while we're coming closer and closer to that becoming at least somewhat of a reality. Nice Speaker 2: To meet you. I am Nellie Speaker 1: Last year, genealogy company, my heritage launched a feature called deep nostalgia, which lets users animate pictures of their deceased loved ones. So you can watch people in old pictures, look around nod and blow a kiss. It's cool, but also a little bit creepy. Now that same company [00:00:30] is launching a feature called live story, which animates a person's face and mouth. So it looks like they're telling their life story. So now you can watch your great grandparents, tell you about where they grew up and what they did for a living. Those narration are accompanied by photos to help tell the story Speaker 3: All in all. They gave me 11 grandchildren whom I love very much. Speaker 1: It's all through a collaboration with a startup called D I D, which uses AI and deep learning to create these video reenactments. Speaker 4: The reason we decided to, to do [00:01:00] this, uh, product is because, cause of, uh, uh, with, with these partners, uh, of course, because of the success we previously had with the deep nostalgia Speaker 1: To make your own life story, you'll need to create an account on the, my heritage website. You can also download the app on the app store or Google play. Then you can upload pictures and write text for the AI and to read, you can choose from 31 different languages and hundreds of different synthetic voices, or you can upload your own audio recording. Speaker 5: [00:01:30] Hi, I'm Mary Jones. It's so nice to meet you. Speaker 1: If you happen to have a family tree on the, my heritage site, you can create a life story from the photos that are already there. Using the information on live story will automatically generate a narrated video with a synthetic voice generator. You'll have the option to customize the video by adding pictures or editing the text. Speaker 2: Samantha, my darling great-granddaughter, although we have never met, I feel that we are perfect soulmates. Speaker 1: After that, you [00:02:00] can watch download and share the video with friends and family or posted on social media. You'll get a limited number of free uses, but if you want unlimited access to live story, then you'll need to upgrade to a, my heritage complete plan, which costs $240 a year. My first thoughts when I heard about this feature were one, this is slightly unsettling. And two, it would be really easy for somebody to misuse this and make someone say L or uncomfortable. But thankfully the folks at my heritage and D I D have thought through that possibility and have a [00:02:30] set of guidelines in place to hopefully prevent misuse. So when people create their first live story, they'll see a popup that says, I understand that the live story will be created using an AI based lip sync technology. And that is intended for use for deceased in only got it dead people only. Speaker 1: Okay. Next they'll have to agree that quote, any live story I create will not include any obscene, offensive defamatory or false information or any content which could violate the privacy of other people. There's also [00:03:00] a text moderation algorithm, which makes sure that people aren't breaking this rule. Perry who's D I D CEO says that he isn't too concerned about pushback with this feature. He says, when they first launched the deep nostalgia feature with my heritage last year, their algorithm found that about 95% of Twitter responses were positive. So he's hoping that there's a similar, positive reaction to live story too. Speaker 4: I think most of the people would, uh, want to try it and get, uh, also and want to [00:03:30] use it, uh, again and again, because it's, it's really nice. It's uh, Harry Potter izing the world. Speaker 1: Well, we'll just have to check our Twitter and TikTok feeds to see how people really feel about it. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe for more content from CNET. Speaker 3: So many moments, so many memories. I am glad I had the opportunity to share some of them with you.