There are many reasons generative AI is the ideal technology for generating nostalgia. Thus far, most of the videos AI produces have an inherently dreamy quality — that slightly too smooth movement, the morphing quality of features, the uncanny facial expressions and peripheral details that are slightly off. But also, the most cutting-edge technology is, in its bones, backward-looking. By its very definition it cannot generate anything new; it can only draw on the aesthetics of the past.
Take this post from The Karl Stefanovic Show‘s Instagram page, which uses AI to paint the soft focus, late-20th-century Australia Stefanovic says he grew up in.