We shan’t forget

Online genealogy platform MyHeritage has embraced deep learning with its Deep Nostalgia service, which allows users to crudely animate photos of their long-dead descendants – or, let’s face it, anything that might get them some online engagement.

Why? Because as much as we lean on technology to pacify us to the extent of pandemic-era football games being broadcast with artificial crowd noise, our sentimentality soon evaporates when presented with a chance to go viral.

Just the other day we had to bury our grandad after his heart gave out during the umpteenth attempt at our sea shanty TikTok routine, and while clearing his house we discovered a box of old photographs. A small note on the back of one of them suggested his own grandad was none other than Clarence Birdseye, the very founder of the modern frozen food industry.

The celebrant suggested we used deepfake technology to have the pair of them perform a sea shanty together for the funeral, which sounded fantastic – but then we realised it would get a hell of a lot more retweets if we swapped out Clarence for the actual Captain Birdseye. Once we’d reached that point it just became obvious to swap Grandad out for Jackie Weaver.

This post is sponsored by OceanGalaxyLight.