The AI Time Machine: How I Successfully “Time Traveled” Back to the Summer of ’74

I have been working, off and on, with AI (Artificial Intelligence) for a year or so now. Mostly experimenting just to see what I can do with it.

Yes, I have gotten ideas and outlines for articles I have written. I have even gotten it to write an article or two for me. However, that being said, I spent almost as much time reviewing/correcting them as I would have if I had written them. That was due to the fact that I had to closely work on them as there were errors and inconsistencies needing to be resolved by a human.

I am not writing as often as I was a few months ago but still doing a few articles for different organizations. AI gives me some direction of where to look or details I may not have thought about. But it is still far from producing articles for me.

To begin I have to mention that I have never said I was an artist, or even having any touch of artistic ability. But recently I was asked to take some old pictures that someone found in a shoebox and see if I could modernize them. I thought OK AI, let’s give it a try.

It was quite amazing to me as to what it could do. So, today I am going to walk you through some of the steps I took.

First, I use Gemini, which is Google’s new “toy” in the AI world. Gemini (also known as Google Gemini) which started as a generative artificial intelligence “chatbot” and virtual assistant by Google. Which is skilled at much more today than when it began as Bard in 2023.

It now does graphics, music, helps you learn (almost any topic you can think about), and I am sure more features are rolling out as I type. The part of Gemini that actually processes graphics is named, Nano Banana 2. Very advanced, descriptive name, isn’t it?

There is a plus (+) you click at the bottom of the screen to add files. I added the picture which I had taken with my iPhone and transferred it to my computer.

In the text box I simply typed, “clarify, sharpen, clear it up and colorize.” Pretty simple instructions. It worked on the picture for less than a minute and came up with this picture.

I thought it wasn’t bad but after working on another photo for someone before this I knew it could do better.

So next, I instructed it to, “make the colors more vivid, realistic and blend the background better. make the people look more natural.” Which you can see below that it did a pretty good job. It also changed our poses slightly; my idiot look in the top photo changed.

Then I decided which one of the photos I liked best of the four. I cropped the other photos out and uploaded only my favorite one back into Gemini.

To this photo I said, “run the same processes on this photo that you did on the previous ones.” Then, I feel as though, it did a great job on the following photo.

Then it worked better than I thought it could. Check out what I thought was the final below.

Robin looked at it and said the same thing I did, “WOW!” She even said she remembered the shirts we wore and the colors were spot on. Of course, I remember being there but not much else. But that is me.

After I put it online and made it my new Facebook avatar she told me something the next day. That was that it was wrong.

She said her eye color was almost perfect, but I have blue eyes not brown. So, my next instruction was “make the man’s eyes blue.” Then I received the photo below. She says the eyes are the exact color they should be.

As I stated earlier, amazing! And also, a long, long time ago…

Now it did make a few changes to the pictures like, head repositions, smile appearing where there wasn’t one originally. But basically, I am satisfied with the outcome.

All you need is a Google Account/Gmail to start. Then visit, gemini.google.com and see how you looked years ago, or even add different hair colors, etc. for fun.

Enjoy!