This touching viral AI video of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanians mom hugging him is also sparking a fiery debate

Date:
Mon, 30 Jun 2025 22:00:00 +0000

Description:
Alexis Ohanian used AI to animate a childhood photo of his late mother
hugging him, sparking a viral emotional response online.

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Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posted a short video of his late mother hugging him, which soon garnered tens of millions of views. Not because the video was a time capsule of a long-ago moment, but because it created it
based on what had only been a still image.

Ohanian used the new AI video generation feature from Midjourney to create
the video based on a single photo. To him, it's a time machine to six seconds from decades ago. Millions of other viewers shared that interpretation of the clip, but a significant number of dissenting voices warned that it was a fake memory that could mess with Ohanian's real remembrance of his mother.

Regardless of how people felt about the video, it seemed clear that most people felt something visceral about the facsimile of a speculative moment. Ohanian wrote, This is how she hugged me. And in that sentence alone is the entire heartbreak and hope of the digital age: the ache to remember more clearly, to hold tighter to someone whos gone, to use machines not for profit or surveillance, but for something intimate. Human.

Theres no shortage of AI tricks floating around right now. You can generate
an image of your cat as an Olympic diver , your family picnic as an animated cartoon, or your child in their future profession. Mostly, these are lightly entertaining fads that also illustrate larger issues surrounding AI. But this is not a disposable video to Ohanian. This is a clip he has made clear he
will treasure. And whether he's simply leveraging AI to keep his mother's memory alive or constructing false memories because he feels the real ones slipping away, he's not the first and has undoubtedly brought the idea more attention than ever.

Theres a strange vulnerability in inviting a machine to guess at your memories. It feels a little like asking a stranger to finish your dream. AI doesnt know your mom. It doesnt know how she laughed or how tightly she
hugged you. It just knows pixels. But sometimes pixels are all weve got.

If youve lost someone, especially before smartphones and camcorders tracked our every moment, you know what its like to wish you had more videos and photos of that person. Ohanian said his family couldnt afford a camcorder. He doesnt have any video of himself with his mom. That photo of a hug in the meadow is it. But with the help of a few prompts and a sophisticated AI
model, that hug lives again. I lost my mom almost 20 years ago. Trolls can rest assured Ive grieved sufficiently. My family couldnt afford a camcorder and using tech to generate few seconds of animation from a still is the equivalent of using AI to stabilize a poorly recorded video or fill in the gaps of June 23, 2025

I dont think the discomfort many expressed is solely about Alexis Ohanian's video or why he chose to make and share it. I think its about what having
this option might mean in the worst scenarios. It's easy to see this moment
as the beginning of a dark and gloomy trend.

I think if it helps Ohanian feel closer to his mother, that's just fine. It's not like the image was itself a fiction; it just externalized his own memory of a hug. It's like a more tactile version of saving your parents' last voicemail to you, or keeping around their favorite scented candle because it makes you smile. Ohanian isn't pretending the video is anything but a memory aid. Using AI to make false memories may or may not become a real problem,
but that's not the case here. AI video remembers

After Ohanians post went viral, people began sharing their own AI-animated family photos. For now, these are just fragments, silent and brief. But judging people's grief and how they handle it, no matter how long it's been, is not something I would ever want to do as long as it's not hurting anyone.
A fair assessment has to be personal.

So I did the same thing as Ohanian. I found a photo I've always liked of my mother, who passed away 13 years ago, celebrating Hanukkah with me in the early 1990s. I used Hailuo (of Olympian cat fame) to make a video based on
the grainy image from my childhood. For what it's worth, I know my mother would have been thrilled to participate, as she was always looking for ways
to assist in any facet of my life, so I didn't have any qualms on that front.

The video is okay. It's not quite matching how she and I look in the photo, though I think the quality of the image is at fault there as much as the vagaries of AI. I could put that aside and imagine the moment from my own younger perspective, thanks to the video, and that was an interesting sensation. But, whether it's because of the quick-and-dirty prompt or just my own circumstances, I didn't feel like it evoked a deeper connection to my
late mother. I suspect there will be plenty who feel the same way if they
make the attempt.

Just because it was a little hollow to me doesn't mean it can't benefit
others without fraying their understanding of their own past. I dont believe Ohanian is trying to replace his mother's memory with an AI filmmaker. I
think hes relatably trying to feel a little closer to her.

Of course, our love of those who have passed away isnt the only thing AI amplifies. It can also amplify our fear, our longing, our capacity to deceive ourselves. This technology is powerful, especially when it gets personal. But for now, it's just a way for Ohanian to surface a fond memory of a hug from his mom, and there are much worse uses for AI models. You might also like Midjourney just dropped its first AI video model and Sora and Veo 3 should be worried Forget virtual pets the next AI video craze is cats doing Olympic diving, and its all thanks to this new Google Veo 3 rival I watched some of the viral ASMR videos made with AI and I feel more confused than soothed



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/this-touching-vira l-ai-video-of-reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanians-mom-hugging-him-is-also-sparki ng-a-fiery-debate


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