Wednesday, March 3, 2021

AI brings Houdini photos to life and it's wild!

I'm sure many of you have seen the latest viral sensation from MyHeritage that uses AI to animate old photographs in a way that is positively haunting. Of course, I had to run Houdini through this and the results are...positively haunting! This is a photo from my own collection. Witness the 20-year-old Houdini come to life.


I also couldn't resist seeing Houdini's parents in motion, especially as there is no known film footage of them. If only Houdini could see this.


If you're not freaked out enough already, here's one more I couldn't resist. Houdini's ectoplasmic face mask come to life. Believe.


If you want to animate your own photos, MyHeritage offers a 14 day free trial. You can also enhance and colorize photos in a way that is pretty impressive.

UPDATE: I couldn't resist going younger and color! Check out: More amazing AI brings Ehrich Weiss to life.

15 comments:

  1. Hi John,
    Absolutely fabulous!
    Do you mind if I post a link to this on the Magic Circle Facebook page?

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  2. So fabulous, I seem to have sent this 3 times... sorry!!!

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  3. Wow.
    ...That's probably as close as we'll ever come to actually seeing Cecelia almost cracking a smile.

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    1. Haha. I was hoping it would add a nice smile.

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  4. Wonderful! Thanks for posting this! It was positively eerie seeing Mama and Samuel come to life. I think the clincher with these animation vdeos is the eyes blinking and the head turning. The smile too.

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    1. Yes, animating his father's photo was one of the first things that came to mind. Had to see that.

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    2. After your animation of Mayer I'm convinced HH had his eyes. They look identical, even the patch of skin fold just under the eyebrows. And Mama's lips.

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  5. This is awesome! Wow. Amazing what AI can do these days.

    Alas, I must point out: You have typo'd "MyHeritage" as "MyHertiage" twice in this article.

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  6. I also did one of Houdini -> https://myhr.tg/1yiah3M3 I even signed up for the free trial, so I could do a few more, ha ha. Creepy, but excellent! Seems to work exceptionally well on photos with a clear background and faces that aren't smiling.

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    1. Oh, wow, that's a really good one.

      My approach to these is to animate photos which I know have no possible film equivalent. I've animated a few photos of the very Young Houdini and they are wild! I was going to hold those back until his birthday, but I think I will share this weekend because this is just so hot at the moment. My blog traffic has been off the chats!

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  7. Finally had a moment to look at these, and I'm so glad I did. They're all wonderful; thanks for sharing. The one of Cecelia is actually kind of heart stopping.

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