Deep Nostalgia, a new service from the genealogy site MyHeritage that animates old family photos, has gone viral on social media, in another example of how AI-based image manipulation is becoming increasingly mainstream. Launched in late February, the service uses an AI technique called deep learning to automatically animate faces in photos uploaded to the system. Because of its ease of use, and free trial, it soon took off on Twitter, where users uploading animated versions of old family photos, celebrity pictures, and even drawings and illustrations. "It makes me so happy to see him smile again!" Try our new #DeepNostalgia #PhotoAnimation feature for yourself and prepare to be AMAZED!!! https://t.co/p3h600G3MX

AI-enabled synthetic media is being used as a tool for manipulating real emotions and capturing user data by genealogy service MyHeritage, which has just launched a new feature -- called "deep nostalgia" -- that lets users upload a photo of a person (or several people) to see individual faces animated by algorithm. The Black Mirror-style pull of seeing long-lost relatives -- or famous people from another era -- brought to a synthetic approximation of life, eyes swivelling, faces tilting as if they're wondering why they're stuck inside this useless digital photo frame, has led to an inexorable stream of social shares since it was unveiled yesterday at a family history conference… This is my great-grandmother, Kathleen. I've always felt so close to her even though she died when I was 2 years old. This #DeepNostalgia video brought tears to my eyes to see her move, almost like seeing her as she was posing for this photo. MyHeritage's AI-powered viral marketing playbook with this deepfakery isn't a complicated one: They're going straight for tugging on your heart strings to grab data that can be used to drive sign-ups for their other (paid) services.