Family history website MyHeritage has unveiled LiveStory (myheritage.com/livestory), a new feature that uses artificial intelligence to let the people depicted in old photographs ‘move’ and ‘speak’.

LiveStory was developed with Israeli company D-ID and follows MyHeritage’s launch in 2021 of Deep Nostalgia, a tool that animates old photographs.

To use LiveStory, you will need to be a MyHeritage subscriber or register for a free account. You begin by uploading a photo of your relation and typing in a biographical account for them to say. The website will then create a video where the photo appears to move, while a voice narrates their story. You can choose the correct gender for the narrator and between a number of accents.

We have created our own example of what LiveStory can achieve, which is on our website at tinyurl.com/wdytya-livestory.