I was an arctic explorer this morning, thanks to AI

This morning I was able to admire myself as what I hope was a prominent member of French royalty at the time. I was also able to giggle at the sight of myself as an arctic explorer and pirate, and be beyond grateful that I had never rocked a 70s hairstyle.

This hour of fun was made possible by MyHeritage’s new opium for the social media masses, an AI time machine that has taken the web by storm.

The process is quite simple: you upload around 10 photos of yourself – some selfies, some full-length, some from different angles – pay a few dollars and wait between 30 and 90 minutes to find out what you would have looked like if you had been born decades or centuries ago or in the future.

With periods ranging from ancient pharaohs and Greeks to medieval Europe, 16^e Century France or the Ottoman Empire to the Swinging Sixties and even our future cyborgs, there really is something to tickle everyone’s tastes.

As an art history fan, I was super excited and quite flattered to see supposed portraits of Rembrandt, Klimt and Van Gogh, whereas as a moderately vain person, I was absolutely horrified to see what artificial intelligence made of me as a person from the 1920s and as an astronaut.

As the illustrations throughout the article show, some depictions were more realistic than others, and some looked more like me than others. It also seemed like the AI ​​Time Machine was having a little trouble with my glasses, and for some reason in almost every photo my eyes are light blue, though they’re perfectly brown in reality.

According to Israel-based online genealogy platform MyHeritage, more than 79 million AI images have been generated on its time machine since the service became available, including many millions of them. are shared on social media, as you may have noticed.

“AI Time Machine uses text-to-image technology licensed from Astria,” the company notes on its website.

“Using a number of photos of a subject, he builds a model that can portray the same person in a variety of different poses and lighting conditions than the original photos. Then, using a series of predefined themes, it synthesizes the model with patterns from the different themes to create photorealistic images.

MyHeritage stipulates that users do not upload photos of children, people in bathing suits, or explicit photos. He also recommends avoiding sunglasses and heavy makeup for best results, as well as a variety of poses.

The service doesn’t do group or couple photos, so you can’t still reimagine yourself and your loved ones on the western frontier all those years ago.

You can, however, get a glimpse of what you might look like as a future cyborg, which from new personal experience isn’t too scary.

The time machine isn’t MyHeritage’s first foray into online entertainment. Last winter, it launched its Deep Nostalgia photo-animation feature, which saw old family photos come to life through animation.

For more information, click here.