The dead woman spoke at her own funeral and even answered questions about her life from – surprised – grieving relatives and friends. This was made possible thanks to the new “smart” holographic video technology, equipped with Artificial intelligencewhich allows you to dialogue with the dead!

The technology, developed by Los Angeles-based StoryFile, an American company, creates a digital hologram of a person before their death and uses a series of pre-death question and answer videos on topics that may be of interest to their loved ones. , his people. This video footage is then used to train the AI ​​system so that it can correctly answer the questions that will be asked at the funeral. The final product, compatible with virtual and augmented reality systems, is “uploaded” to the StoryFile digital platform, from where a “dialogue” (or rather, the illusion of dialogue) takes place via an online connection during the funeral.

Thus, according to the BBC, Telegraph and Daily Mail, the 87-year-old British woman – one of the world’s first users of innovative technology – appeared in the form of a talking hologram shortly after she was cremated. After giving a short speech about her life (including that of a Holocaust survivor) and her spiritual views, she answered questions from family members who attended the funeral. Smith videotaped her responses approximately six months before her death, spending several hours on video over the course of two days.

The technology, available in the UK as of this week, was created by her son Dr Stephen Smith, co-founder and CEO of StoryFile. Smith acknowledged that the hologram “shocked” those present and said that his blessed mother answered their questions “with new details and honesty”, including about her difficult childhood, her parents’ divorce, her political views, her predictions of the future world, and etc. .

“She somehow attended”

The original idea behind StoryLife in 2017 was to preserve the stories of Holocaust survivors as well as other historical figures, but along the way it was realized that it could be more widely used at funerals (and beyond). Anyone who wants to can create a “story” in StoryFile and answer questions about topics they think their friends and family might be interested in before they die. for example, about his past love affairs or about his other secrets.

Unlike fabricated videos (deepfakes), this technology does not put inappropriate words into a person’s mouth. If in the hologram of the deceased (that is, in the AI ​​system) there is no ready-made corresponding answer to the question, then the deceased “asks” the questioner to ask something else.

Stephen Smith stressed that thanks to new technology, his mother was “somehow present” at her funeral, and pointed out that her words were indeed her own and not the creation of artificial intelligence. Rolo Carpenter, creator of the CleverBot chatbot, confirmed that the StoryFile intelligent system does not attempt to invent its own responses, it simply selects – depending on the autopsy question – suitable video responses from a predefined set in its database.

Smith envisions many other commercial uses for the new technology beyond talking to the dead, such as in customer service and sales. He stated that he envisions a world where people are constantly filming their lives so that later it would appear that their 18-year-olds, 50-year-olds, etc., are speaking.

A more advanced step would be to use artificial intelligence to create a fully synthetic (digital) “persona” of a deceased person, which Smith considers impossible. “Everything about us is completely unique. No one can create a synthetic version of me, even if it looks like me,” he said, to which Carpenter agreed.

^{Source: APE-MEB}