Research notes

This is a living document. Last edited: 22 Dec 2024

Past.fi is a research initiative leveraging advanced AI to animate historical photographs. This ongoing project investigates the potential of AI in revitalizing early 20th-century imagery, with a particular focus on photographs of Helsinki.

The project is supported by ombord.co and uses experimental tools developed by addet.eu. Our goal is to create new and innovative ways of interacting with historical images and to explore the potential of AI in the field of visual arts.

A key objective of the project is to monitor advancements in AI models. As of December 2024, current models demonstrate impressive realism in close-up restoration.

This video generated from a 1910 photograph achieves a level of fidelity approaching lifelike quality.

Generating a 5 second video like this can be generated in under 2 mins for $0.40 if using a cloud service. Generating 1 hour of footage costs $288 ($0.08/s * 3600s). If we restore 2 photograph a day, we get to 1 hour of footage in a year.

With automated pipeline, 1 hour of footage takes 24 hours to generate.

Limitations

While the results are impressive, there are many limitations. For example, AI models struggle with images containing multiple people or complex backgrounds. They struggle especially with people in distance, but can do exceptionally well at close up. Hands, walking, and eyes are a common problem.

The quality of the original photograph plays a significant role in the final result. Using high-resolution photo yields best results for both close-ups and wide-shots. Additional steps need to be taken if source photo is low quality.

Loss of detail

Some loss of detail is apparent. In the following example, original photo was cropped to a close up, which was then used to generate a video.

Contact

If you are interested in learning more about the project or would like to get involved, please contact us at info@past.fi