A new and rather “innocent” aspect of the controversial deepfake artificial intelligence technology is presented by the website MyHeritage that offers visitors help finding elements of their family tree. Deepfake technology creates falsified but highly realistic videos in which someone appears to say things or make movements that they did not say and do. This technology, which was initially used to create satirical or entertaining videos, quickly gained malicious use. Initially, they started to appear where videos of various and generally famous people from every place appeared in pornographic content, while later it was found that this technology is not used for political propaganda either, showing politicians saying things they had never said, creating confusion until the truth was established.

Recently it became known that this technology is also used by the television and film industry to make actors appear to be playing a role, while in reality the filming has been done by an extra and simply with the help of deepfake it is simply added to the face of the actor. In this way an advertisement was made with Bruce Willis who due to the condition he was diagnosed with is no longer able to work but in the advertisement he appears to be taking part.

The tool created by the website is called “AI Time Machine” and as the name suggests it is an artificial intelligence time machine. All the user has not done is put his photo in the tool and choose the time period he wants. The system that according to its creators creates “hyper-realistic images” that will show as an ancient Greek soldier, as a Roman Centurion, as a Viking, as a knight of the Middle Ages or if it is a woman as an Egyptian Queen, an Amazon, whatever else everyone wishes user. According to the executives of the website, these are “surrealistic images” of ourselves in a previous historical context. The user of the tool can, of course, not only post their own photos, but anyone else’s as well, but the website states that it would be good to have that person’s consent.

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