A series of short videos have been created that use tiny AI to bring history to life.
The narrated clips were put together by Tinwell’s Chris O’Regan, who used old photographs of Stamford’s Broad Street as a starting point and used artificial intelligence to bring them to life.
The result is a fascinating glimpse of a single site through time, including details such as the beginnings of Blackstone, the Central Cinema fire, and what happened recently at the Broad Street site.
Chris explained: “I know some people don’t like AI, but I think when used in the right context it can be very engaging and a bit of fun.
“This started by creating a video series to publish on TikTik based on the ‘what if’ part of the Seven Lost Wonders of the Ancient World still existed today.
“So I wondered how a similar process could be used at Stanford University. I thought a brief history would be the best bet. As someone who worked at Central Nightclub many years ago, I’ve always been fascinated by its history, so it seemed like a logical choice.”
“I took some old photos, cleaned them up a bit, and colored them using a combination of Photoshop and ChatGPT (AI).
“We then ran these images through an AI video app called Grok, and after playing around with it a bit, we were able to create a short time-lapse video.
“Then I ran these through video editing software (Adobe Premiere for iPhone), slowed them down a bit and looped them to create a video of the appropriate length.”
Chris already knew about the history of the building, and after doing some fact-checking, he put together a short script for each video, read the script aloud using his phone’s audio capabilities, then screen-recorded it to capture the audio and added it to the video with a little pacing adjustment.
“It’s a pretty simple thing considering how much work the AI app did, but it still takes a little time to get it working the way I wanted it to,” Chris says.
“Maybe I’m being a little picky, but no matter how quickly the AI can generate individual photos and videos, you can spend hours doing something like this.”
