Happy Hump Day Fam! At the end of last year, every man and his dog became obsessed with AI generated art - I’m sure your social feed was filled with images of people as mythical creatures, historical figures, or in just fun and interesting art styles. The leader behind this, before lots of copy-cat sites popped up, was MyHeritage with their AI Time Machine, another addition to their ever-growing photo editing collection, joining their already popular InColor, DeepNostalgia, and DeepStory. Having already utilised some of these features, I was excited about this latest edition, and knew it would create some amazing results. While it’s not as genealogy-specific as the other MyHeritage photo features, it does compliment genealogy really well, especially because it allows you to see what you’d look like in your ancestor’s era. It’s been a really fun experience so far, and I just had to share some of my results so you can see what all the hype is about. Using text-to-image technology licensed from Astria, the MyHeritage AI Time Machine uses Artificial Intelligence to create AI images of someone as they may have looked during different periods in history, from way back to the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, right up to 1970s Hippies, Astronauts, and even jumping ahead to a Futuristic Cyborg. It’s a really great spread of time periods and locations, covering not only well-known eras and art styles, but also time periods and geographical locations that many people would have in their ancestry. Okay, so I can’t trace my family history all the way back to the Romans, but I look pretty damn good as a Roman. The technology works by uploading at least 10 photos of yourself, with the AI magic using these images to time-travel back to all these different eras. And of course, the quality and look of these images is going to effect how the AI images are generated - let’s just say that not all the images are perfect. Within each theme, there is at least one image, for me, that has generated my eyes or mouth weird, which is a shame because they would have been fantastic images had they worked properly. But of course, these errors kind of come with the territory of computer-generated art using my features with pre-determined characteristics of the different themes. I’m sure if I were to use a different collection of images of myself, not only would the results be different, but the types of errors would be different too. Now, AI Time Machine is a paid feature of MyHeritage, unless you have a MyHeritage Complete Plan, which is something I do not have. BUT, because it’s still new and exciting, there have been several bouts of free offers to try the technology out, and that’s what I took advantage of. This first pack features 20 themes, which amounts to 160 images - 8 per theme. These themes include: Roman, Celtic, Saxon, Persian Princess, Ottoman Janissary, 16th Century Royalty, Pirate, 18th Century Bride, French Royalty, Portrait by Van Gogh, Russian Tsarina, Portrait by Klimt, Ottoman Empire Bride, 1920s Flapper, 1920s B&W, 1940s Painter, 1950s, 1950s Illustration, 1970s Hippie, and Punk Rocker. fter that, additional themes can be purchased. I chose to purchase 20 more themes, and instead of just giving me 20 more random themes, I could actually choose which ones I wanted generated. While it was definitely difficult to narrow down which 20 themes I wanted, I’m definitely happy with the ones I chose. And of course, I can easily purchase the remaining themes in the future anyway. The themes I haven’t purchased/generated yet are Biblical Woman, World Explorer, Portrait by Rembrandt, Baroque, American Frontier, US Civial War Woman, Cowgirl, Arctic Explorer, Aviator, WWII Nurse, Astronaut, and Futuristic Cyborg. All these themes are part of the ‘Time-Travel’ collection. But MyHeritage have also created an ‘Avatar’ collection of 40 themes (320 images), which includes a World Cup Soccer Player, Action Figure, Game Character, Makeup, Model, Adventurer, Dragon Rider, Pencil Sketch, Painting, Color Splash, Chess Player, Galactic, Hipster, Angel, Tarzan, and Santa Claus. I haven’t tried this collection yet, but might in the future once I do all the Time-Travel ones. While I’m sure these images look stunning, the draw card, for me, for the Time Machine is to actually see what I’d look like during all these historical eras. The Avatars will just be an added bonus whenever I get round to generating them. The whole experience has been a really interesting one, and I was immediately blown away by how stunning some of the images turned out. I’m genuinely obsessed with my Roman, Saxon, Celtic, and Ottoman Janissary selves, and they have me seriously thinking that I’ve been born in the completely wrong time period! And while I was disappointed that some didn’t turn out that well, the ones that did turn out really well definitely outweighed that disappointment.
I know there has been a lot of talk since the popularity of AI artwork blew up that some of these websites have been stealing the work of digital artists without seeking their permission. While MyHeritage haven’t come out with a comment on this issue, I also haven’t seen people calling out MyHeritage specifically. Feel free to do your own research before jumping on the bandwagon if you are concerned. If you’re yet to jump onboard the AI imaging trend, definitely get behind MyHeritage and see the magic for yourself. All the results I’ve seen so far, both of my own images and of others that have popped up in my social feeds, have been amazing - it’s no wonder that 36 MILLION photos had been uploaded to the Time Machine before the end of the 2022. It’ll be interesting to see if they add anymore image themes, to both the Time-Machine and Avatar collections. And if you’re interested in knowing more about some of the other photo features on MyHeritage, I did share two blog posts about using the InColor system when it launched in 2020. You can read, and see the results, here and here. Happy Time Traveling! Victoria :) |
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