Google’s DeepMind team has dabbled in storytelling with The Great Voyage, a three-minute silent film that feels like a 1930s relic, built entirely by artificial intelligence. Using a collection of 1800s photographs found in a thrift store, this short uses Google’s Imagen model to spin a weird tale of adventure, with sepia-toned visuals and an AI-scored soundtrack.
The project started with a lucky find in a thrift store—a batch of 1800s photographs, the kind you’d dig up in a dusty attic, with stiff poses and worn edges. These weren’t your average snapshots; they were carte de visite, a 1860s format known for small, sepia prints. Instead of letting them fade away, DeepMind’s team fed them into a fine-tuned Imagen model. The result is a set of new images that capture the originals’ aged charm but expand into full scenes. These are the core of The Great Voyage, a story about an inventor named Francis and his wife Edith who sail to a strange new world with strange creatures.
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Visually The Great Voyage gets early cinema. Each frame looks like a 1930s reel, soft focus and warm and faded. The AI images don’t just copy the thrift store photos they expand them into full scenes of bustling docks, churning seas and otherworldly landscapes that are both nostalgic and strange. The characters’ poses are exaggerated and stiff like silent films where every gesture told the story. But there’s a faint uncanny valley – moments where the AI is too polished and reveals its digital roots. A sailor’s face might glint too smoothly or a creature’s design might feel just a touch too dreamlike.
The AI composed score is the real star. It’s not just background music – it’s part of the narrative. The music goes from gentle piano to soaring strings and matches the film’s emotional peaks and valleys. Silent films relied on music to convey what dialogue couldn’t and The Great Voyage delivers. The AI seems to get the story’s pulse and knows when to hold on a quiet moment or swell for a big reveal. Close your eyes and the soundtrack tells a story of adventure and discovery.
But what’s most interesting is how it was made. DeepMind used a LoRA fine-tuned Imagen model, effectively teaching the AI to think like a 19th century photographer. LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) allowed them to adapt the model to the thrift store photos without starting from scratch.
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