My father died after my fourth birthday in 1992. Being so small, I have some memories of them and my family has only a small handful of home movie clips, which were shot in a brief window before dying. But I still have pictures and in my test of a new phone, I found that I was able to bring it to life using AI.
sincerely? I really don't know how to feel about it.
The original image of my father (left) and AI-made video of his (right).
The phone is the new Honor 400 Pro and when it is roughly a decent handset, it packs a tool that uses AI (operated by Google's Veo-2 model) to convert any image into a 5-second video. I doubted when I read a press release about it (as I am usually), but I found it attractive to really use it. It works like this.
You open the tool within the gallery app, choose your source image from any picture you do in your camera roll and hits Go. It takes about a minute to analyze the image, but then that picture suddenly spreads to life, such as a magical picture from the world of Harry Potter. Do not like the result? Just ask to re -generate it and you will get some different results.
The original still image.
AI-made video version (converted into a low quality GIF format).
I have tried it on various images with mixed results. Sometimes it is very less important (the image of a person reading a book simply changes them a page), while in other times it becomes strangely difficult. I loaded into a picture of a sheep family on the Scottish Island that I shot on the Kodak Gold film (was seen below). In the Moving AI version, there was a flood of sheep through the frame before cutting the camera angle for an aerial view of the entire herd running in a meadow. I think children say “extra”. Ditto when I ran it on my cat's picture and threw it into a bizarre looking title for some baffling reasons (seen forward).
The original image of this sheep's family.
AI-made video version (converted into a low quality GIF format).
But then I went away another way. I have taken a picture of my father on my shelf for decades. This shows him playing bass in his band. This is an image that I love for many reasons, but mainly because I am a musician myself and I always like that we have generally done it. But that is a picture I have seen performing him. I certainly never went to any show and I do not believe that there is a video footage of him. So far, that is.
I fed the image in the app and the trapidation hit go with a certain meaning. I was waiting to process it and then suddenly he was there: my father, walking around, jammed his bass, was seen in a sense of performance. It changed this small black and white picture which I have made valuable for something else for so long. Some alive. This really made me quite emotional.
But then another part of my brain spoke. This is not my father. This is not her moving and vibing with music. Not necessarily This is the one who imagines Google's algorithm that he will do. In many ways it is as if it is being controlled by some invisible puppet, which is trying to imprint a lifetime movement.
I ran a few more times to see what the option it would give, but every originally there was a minor change on it while playing bass. To be fair, AI did a great job here. It looks realistic, running right with shadow, living in the microphone place and his hands are really as if they are especially playing a bass guitar. It is still in black and white, with the grain of the film and various signs of aging still exist.
The original image of my cute cat tooluz.
What the hell is this?
I think this made me the difference because it really gave me the feeling of what he looked on the stage. I could not squint to ignore any strange errors or random other elements, could be thrown into AI.
So how do I feel, I am divided into it. On the one hand it is a way that it loves a deceased in this way, loves in such a way, which is only based on Google's “best estimate”. I showed it to my brother, which I think was the same stance like me: “I am not sure I like it, but I don't even think I dislike it. It is a way scary in a way.”
On the other hand, this life has been injected into a picture which I have made valuable for decades and have given me a glimpse of what my father can be on stage. And I loved to see it, even if it was not real at all.
This is definitely not a perfect solution for me, and if I really want to remember him then I will turn to our real home films compared to A-Created Imagery. But such an AI device may eventually bring real comfort to many people in this world, who currently have only a handful of stable images.
And I would like to think that, for all AI defects, perhaps this is a way that can do something good.
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