My Argentine grandmother shed tears this month when her grandson surprised her with an Ai-generated video of her husband, who passed away more than 30 years ago.
The woman Sati smirked at the once packed image of her husband Jose.
Her grandson, Martin Gerhitlom, made a video with his followers in Tiktok in early July and shared it.
“Is that Pepe?” The 100-year-old Satty asks in the video, referring to him using his Spanish nickname, sharing a storyful story.
At one point, Satty hugged her face with her hands and was overjoyed at what her grandchild had created before returning to look at her husband another.
Watch the heartwarming moment
Grandchild uses AI to animate photos of his late grandfather for his 100 year old grandmother
In Buenos Aires, a 100-year-old woman sheds tears after her grandson animated a photo of her late husband using AI.
Even though her husband passed away more than 30 years ago, her grandmother is still “in love like on the first day.”
According to Storyful, Sati's husband Jose passed away more than 30 years ago.
She talks frequently with her grandchildren, and one of the general topics of the discussion is that she got married many years ago, Gerhitlom said.
“My grandmother Sati always talks about my grandfather Jose,” Gerhitlom said. “She's in love like she was on the first day.”
Her grandson is a UX designer and musician and loves to showcase new technologies like her grandmother's new technology (AI), which she told Storyful.
A pairing of technology and love for her late husband was given. He recalled a photo of Jose sitting on a small table in her living room. He then explained to her how they could take the image and create something new.
“First, I told her, 'I'm going to take a picture of him on my phone,'” he explained to his grandmother. “Then I said, “I'm going to transfer this photo to the computer, and we'll bring it back to life.”
When he played the video for her on July 7th, he asked if she understood what was going on.
“What a god,” she said in the video. “I love you, Jose. We loved each other. I can't believe it.”
Use AI to bring your loved ones back to life
Tiktok users don't just use AI to revisit coveted moments with their loved ones. Reddit entrepreneur and co-founder Alexis Ohanian shared a video of herself as a child with a mother who passed away in X in June. In the AI-generated video, he and his mother hug him, and she looks at him before hugging her again and swaying from side to side.
“I wasn't prepared for how this would feel,” he wrote. “We didn't have a video camera so there's no video with my mom. One of our favorite photos of Midi Joanie was “AI Video Start Frame”… This is how she hugged me.
Ohanian's post spurred the discussion, with some X users warning him against using AI to recreate moments like this, claiming that AI will give users false memories.
Ohanian added to X user that his mother died almost 20 years ago, so he “sadly enough.”
He added that his family could not afford a camcorder at the time. In his eyes, creating animated videos using AI is similar to using AI to stabilize or fill in gaps in old or unrecorded videos.
“It's not a replacement for someone you love and shouldn't,” he wrote.
Saleen Martin is a reporter for the USA Today Now team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – 757. Email her to sdmartin@usatoday.com.
