When Marina Smith’s friends and family came to her funeral last June, most of them probably believed they would never interact with the deceased again. This is what death has, which is final and does not give a second chance. Or, at least, it was. At one point during the ceremony, the 87-year-old digitally came back to life. through a big screen, and thanks to the previous work done with artificial intelligence (AI), The missing person was answering one by one the questions the assistants were asking him. He also had time to reveal some family secrets that even his son Stephen Smith, the creator of the device that made the moment possible, didn’t know.
«I spent two years without seeing him because of the pandemic. When we met again, in January last year, I asked permission to ask him a few questions, not knowing he was going to die in June, and he agreed. During her interview I asked her what she would say at her funeral, among many other uncomfortable questions,” Smith now recalls in a conversation with ABC. story file, a digital tool that allows anyone who wants it to store their personal history through answers to more or less inconvenient questions on the Internet. The platform is one of many that have emerged recently that allows the user to leave a digital legacy that lives on, And to create an almost perfect avatar of a human being that the user can create quietly at home even with a ‘smartphone’.
more than firm 2,500 questions available In which the user can add whatever he wants. « For example, you can describe how your experience in the military was. From there you can be more specific and ask, for example, about time spent in Vietnam or even about things that happened to the person while he was a prisoner in Hanoi, concludes Story File’s executive director. Removed Artificial Intelligence does magic. Thanks to that, when a family member talks with the missing person’s avatar, the conversation goes on in the most natural way, as if it were a video call. The machine does not invent anything by itself. All responses received are completely true to the words of the person being recorded. At least in this case.
However, Stephen Smith makes it clear that this type of technological revival is not the only task that his i a,We think of the site as a living photo album, This is a timeline that speaks directly to people. The idea is that, for example, tomorrow a mother could teach her children how she was at 18, thanks to the recordings she made in the application.
family rest
Indeed, Story File isn’t the only startup currently out there with the prospect of creating digital twins and making available to users avatars of their missing loved ones. One of the noisiest companies, as it became clear recently at the CES fair in Las Vegas, the most important in the technology sector, and where it was honored, is Ray; Commemoration, a solution created last September by South Korean company DeepBrain AI. Unlike the story file, in this case the sole objective is to console the family of the deceased. The solution is also capable of creating personalized videos for congratulating children and grandchildren on their birthday.
«So far, there are about ten families that have already used the service to create avatars of their loved ones. The product is currently only in the Korean market, but there is also interest in the US, China and Japan. We’re trying to reach agreement with funeral services, because a lot of people end up managing that kind of time,” Michael Jung, DeepBrain AI’s head of strategy and business development, told this newsletter. Told in conversation.
scheduled meetings
In the case of Rememory, the company has a large studio in which users are recorded and interviewed during approx 7 hours approx, This is the time required for AI to be able to create an avatar that communicates and maintains a conversation fluently, gesturing just as humans did in life. or approx. Service, alas, is not within the reach of all pockets. it amounts to $10,000,
The relative can chat with the deceased’s avatar anywhere. Even through your ‘smartphone’ or your computer. Deepbrain AI also has own room, with large screens that families can visit for special occasions. “We currently have six theaters in Korea. The death anniversary of the deceased is a very important moment here, so we have discreet places where they can come to interact.
As was the case with Story File, the AI that DeepBrain uses nothing has been invented, The digital legacy of the deceased will not share a single thought that was not expressed by the deceased during the recording. However, we do know that, if it wanted to, artificial intelligence could easily forgo certainty and follow a plausible path. That is, the machine can answer questions in the same way as it believes a specific person, based on the training it has received. But without knowing if I would actually do it.
This is what tools like Character AI allow, an AI recently developed by two former Google engineers and accessible to all. Through this, one can interact with robots that try to behave like historical figures, such as Miguel de Cervantes, or businessmen, such as Elon Musk. It’s all thanks to the vast amount of information that abounds on the Internet.
This is similar to what Mindbank AI offers, a phone application that through conversation invites the user to create a sort of digital twin that evolves with the user as time passes. “I started making the app two years ago after watching my daughter talk to Apple’s virtual assistant Siri. I wanted to create a large database so that it could interact with me even when I was no more,” says Emil Jimenez, co-founder and director of the app.
To date, MindBank AI has approximately 20,000 users. Currently, it aspires to act as a time capsule of sorts in which the user can see how he or she develops as a person. Unlike the previous ones, in this case everything is done by answering the questions that the machine asks you through your ‘smartphone’. «The ‘App’ is like a personal console. It has more than 400 questions, some very abstract, about life, love, work, culture…”, explains Jiménez. Thanks to the use of psychological algorithms, users are classified based on their responses , even their strengths and weaknesses are shown. The goal is also that, in the future, this data will serve to explain to anyone what the user would do in a situation or answer a specific question.
