MyHeritage launched their Deep Nostalgia feature three years ago. The first announcement was in MyHeritage Introduces Deep Nostalgia™ to Animate Your Family Photos (dated 25 February 2021). The second announcement with the animations was in MyHeritage Introduces Deep Nostalgia™ Special Animations (dated 21 April 2021), and I tried it out.
Then in 2022, MyHeritage launched the LiveStory feature in MyHeritage Releases LiveStory, A Groundbreaking Feature That Automatically Creates Video Biographies, Using D-ID Pioneered AI Technology (dated 3 March 2022). I tried that out also, and created a story with my mother's avatar speaking (not in her exact voice), with a script and narrating several photographs. Then had my heart problems and had forgotten about it.
1) The current MyHeritage DeepStory storymaking feature, which can use photographs and a speaking avatar, is called DeepStory. It appears that "LiveStory" was renamed as "DeepStory" back in 2022. A MyHeritage Knowledge Base article and video are in DeepStory: Your Visual Storytelling Tool for more information. This is artificial intelligence for genealogy.
2) Today I took a look at DeepStory again, both on the website app (https://www.myheritage.com/deepstories/) and on the mobile app (under Photos on the main menu of the MyHeritage app, available in the App Stores). A MyHeritage subscriber who has uploaded person photos (preferably full face) can let the website or mobile app use one of their photographs as the avatar and the information in the family tree profile for the subject person (e.g., birth, death, marriages, parents, spouses, siblings, census, military, etc. records) to create a DeepStory for the person of interest. The audio and video for the person created hy the app uses the chosen avatar who speaks the created script with facial and mouth movements.
3) I created several DeepStories today - here is one for my maternal grandmother, Emily Kremp (Auble) Carringer (1899-1977):
That mp4 file is about 1:47 minutes long and is 14.7 mb in file size. I added no extra photographs and did not edit the paragraphs. My grandmother's avatar speaks throughout in a voice that is not my grandmother's (I do not have an audio file of her voice). It turns out the user can listen to different voice samples and pick an appropriate one.
4) In addition, a user can edit the text paragraphs created by MyHeritage DeepStory (which are in several paragraphs) and can upload photographs to illustrate each paragraph. I did that for my mother, Betty Virginia (Carringer) Seaver (1919-2002):
That mp4 file is about 3:00 minutes long and is 24.1 mb in size. It has another voice, but is not my mother's voice (I do not have an audio file of her voice).
5) The only problem I had with doing these audio/video stories of my ancestors initially is that I had to use a photograph of the person that MyHeritage chose, not one of my own choosing from my MyHeritage Photos page. Some of the chosen photographs were not large enough or clear enough to enable DeepStory to work. I have been unable to change some of the avatar photographs.
I was able to create the DeepStory audio/video on the web app with the chosen (by MyHeritage) avatar photograph, and then could change the avatar to one of my choosing from my computer files (but not from my MyHeritage Photos for some reason). I could never get the mobile app to select photos from the MyHeritage Photos page - only from my iPhone photos, which didn't have the photos I wanted to use.
6) Having made the DeepStory audio and video, the mp4 file was sent to my email by MyHeritage after the video was rendered (it usually took 5 to 10 minutes to receive it). I could then download it to a computer file and store it in a safe place where it will be backed up. I can then upload it to my blog post (as above), to my Google Drive, to my FOREVER account, and to my YouTube channel (I haven't done this yet, but I will!).
The mp4 file also is placed on the user's DeepStory page on the web app and the mobile app. Here is a screencap of my DeepStory page:
7) I don't know if I can delete them if I want to or if I can create another one when I have more information. I can always change the avatar, add more paragraphs manually, and add more paragraph photos to an existing DeepStory.
I don't know if there is a maxmum length to the audio/visual file on MyHeritage. There may be.
8) The biggest time factor in doing this (at least for me) is getting the story created (it took several minutes to create it on MyHeritage web app), and changing the avatar photograph (perhaps two minutes if it's already on my computer). Editing the paragraphs for my mother's DeepStory took about ten minutes for eight paragraphs of text). Adding a photo to each paragraph took a minute or less, as long as I had the photo on my computer.
9) I really like this DeepStory audio/visual feature because it tells a story of a person with photographs. I don't find the animations weird or creepy. The mouth movements are, in my opinion, realistic. I may experiment with the voices - for instance, I'm sure that my Richman/Richmond great-grandparents had an English accent!
I will be doing more of the DeepStories but I don't have many photos before 1870 or so! And I will post them on Facebook from time to time, adding them to my YouTube channel, and passing them to my daughters and grandchildren.
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