Reddit co-founder had no videos of his mom – so he asked AI to make one
Alexis Ohanian uses AI to create video memory of late mother, Anke, who died of cancer in 2008, garnering over 7 million views on X.
Alexis Ohanian, best known as the co‑founder of Reddit and husband of Serena Williams, recently shared a deeply moving AI‑augmented video featuring himself and his late mother, Anke Ohanian, who died from terminal brain cancer in 2008.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Ohanian explained that he did not have any videos of his mother. To revisit a precious childhood memory, the co-founder of Reddit turned to artificial intelligence. More specifically, Ohanian used Midjourney to reconstruct a memory that was never captured on film.
A walk down memory lane - with AI
He shared with Midjourney an old childhood photograph that shows him hugging his mother and asked the generative AI tool to turn it into a video. The AI tool delivered - and how!
“Damn, I wasn't ready for how this would feel. We didn't have a camcorder, so there's no video of me with my mom. I dropped one of my favorite photos of us in midjourney as 'starting frame for an AI video' and wow... This is how she hugged me. I've rewatched it 50 times,” Alexis Ohanian wrote while sharing the final result on X.
The video has gone viral with more than 7 million views and a ton of amazed comments, although some people also raised concerns about privacy and technology.
“It's not how she hugged you. You've been given a false memory,” a user wrote in the comments section. “A few months from now you’ll be talking to dead people resurrected from their social media posts in VR,” another said.
“Be careful with this. Human memories are very malleable, and you'll remember what the AI shows you whether it's true or not,” a third X user cautioned.
Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit in 2005, has previously spoken about how his mother’s illness shaped his life and career. She was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer just months into Reddit’s early growth. “Her diagnosis had a tremendous impact on my career and life,” he wrote in one Instagram post in 2022.
