Are Memories the Ultimate Luxury? Alexis Ohanian Uses AI to Recreate His Mother

In the pantheon of great luxury, time has always reigned supreme. Not the ticking sort measured by Rolex and Patek Philippe—though we admire both—but the elusive, emotional kind. A fleeting smile. A voice lost to silence. A moment you’d give anything to relive.

And now, astonishingly, you can. Watch the Alexis Ohanian video here.

A Hug That Changed Everything

On 22nd June 2025, Alexis Ohanian—Reddit co-founder and modern Renaissance man—posted a brief video on X (formerly Twitter). Just nine seconds long. But in that moment, he quietly cracked open a new frontier in human emotion.

The video, generated by Midjourney’s latest AI video model, showed Ohanian being hugged by his late mother. Not archive footage, not a deepfake stitched from old VHS tapes—this was a digital resurrection, conjured from a single still image. It was moving. It was real. And it was utterly transformative.

“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.” he wrote. “I’ve rewatched it 50 times.”

This wasn’t a tech demo. This was a velvet-gloved revolution. A taste of what AI can now give us: not more information, but more feeling.

Where Emotion Meets Engineered Art

Midjourney, long known for its dreamlike image generation, has taken a cinematic leap. Its new video capability turns still photographs into living moments—eyes blinking, arms embracing, smiles blooming. These aren’t robotic simulations; they’re astonishingly tender.

The Ohanian video doesn’t just show his mother. It shows her loving him. This is where AI becomes emotional luxury. The finest things in life have always been about craft—yachts, Savile Row suits, first-edition Hemingways. Now, we have bespoke memory.

Rebuilding the Past, One Frame at a Time

AI-generated video is no longer the stuff of speculative fiction. With models like OpenAI’s Sora, Pika Labs, and Runway in full stride, we’re witnessing the birth of a new visual medium—where footage doesn’t exist until it’s needed.

The implications are vast. Legacy, remembrance, romance—scenes that were never filmed can now be felt. And like any true luxury, it’s intimate, emotional, and achingly personal.

We are, in effect, becoming collectors of our own past.

The Sweet Trap of Nostalgia

But there is a shadow to this velvet light.

Nostalgia is powerful. We know this. It’s the engine of heritage brands and classical architecture, the reason why Rolls Royce matters. But it can also be used to manipulate. Political parties—particularly those on the right—have mastered the art of invoking golden ages that never truly existed.

AI-generated video supercharges this emotional weaponry. Imagine voters swayed by vivid re-creations of a past they never lived—carefully crafted to feel comforting, patriotic, righteous. If memory becomes editable, then so does identity. And if identity is programmable, what happens to free will?

The danger isn’t in the technology itself, but in our trust of it. The velvet glove can conceal an iron fist.

The Ethics of Digital Resurrection

Is it healthy to relive moments that never truly happened?

Critics argue we’re entering dangerous territory—a psychological hall of mirrors, where grief is prolonged and memories are replaced with idealised simulations. Will future generations form emotional bonds with AI-generated moments, rather than real ones?

Perhaps. But memory has always been subjective. This technology simply makes that subjectivity more precise. We must ask not whether it’s “real,” but whether it’s true to us. In Ohanian’s case, the answer was yes, as using a real image, the moment did actually happen.

Couture Code and Cinematic Precision

Midjourney’s video tools are not basic animations. They are emotional couture. The details—eye movement, light bounce, subtle tension in the fingertips—are inferred with the elegance of a Savile Row tailor or a master horologist.

This isn’t mere technology. It’s cinema born from sentiment.

Imagine it: your father’s smile recreated from a wedding photo. Your child’s first steps, reimagined from a single snapshot. A dance, a kiss, a last goodbye—all reconstructed in 4K emotion.

Beyond the Hug: What Comes Next?

The applications are as limitless as your memories. Imagine commissioning bespoke AI videos of your life’s most precious moments—luxury memoirs where the scenes you never captured can now be lovingly recreated. Luxury brands may soon revive their founders in cinematic form, weaving emotionally rich origin stories that blend heritage with digital art. Even historic estates and private villas could be reimagined in their golden age, complete with candlelit soirées from 1725 brought to vivid, simulated life. Emotional NFTs—one-of-a-kind memory artefacts—are poised to become the next collectible for those who desire not just ownership, but deeply personal meaning. This isn’t about faking history; it’s about creating a more emotionally resonant version of it.

A New Class of Collectible

We’ve always craved uniqueness—the rare Aston, the family château, the original Rembrandt sketch. Now, we can possess something even rarer: a moment no one else has. One crafted from memory and rendered with precision.

Commissioned AI videos could become the next great status symbol. They’ll hang beside your Audemars Piguet or McLaren F1—except these won’t just tell time or win races. They’ll feel.

The Ultimate Luxury: Time, Reimagined

Alexis Ohanian’s video isn’t just about innovation. It’s about intimacy. It’s about closing the gap between what was and what we wish had been. In an era obsessed with the next big thing, this technology lets us look back—beautifully, poignantly, luxuriously. And maybe that’s the most revolutionary part.

Because luxury, at its heart, isn’t about excess. It’s about experience. And with AI, we may finally be able to experience the one thing no one could sell us before: the past we never had, but always wanted.