The blessed answered their questions “with new details and sincerity”
“She’s alive!” The… almost. A dead woman, Marina Smith, spoke at her funeral, and even answered questions about her life, asked by her -surprised- bereaved relatives and friends. This has been made possible thanks to a new AI-powered “smart” holographic video technology that allows one to enter into a dialogue with a deceased person, in this case the deceased 87-year-old British Holocaust activist!
The technology, developed by US company StoryFile based in Los Angeles, creates a digital hologram of the person before they die and uses a series of question-and-answer videos taken before they die about topics that could be of interest to those close to them. his people. This footage is then used to train an artificial intelligence system so that it can appropriately answer questions that will be asked at the funeral. The final product – which is compatible with virtual and augmented reality systems – is “loaded” onto StoryFile’s digital platform from where, via an internet connection, the “dialogue” (or rather the illusion of dialogue) takes place during the funeral.
In this way, according to the BBC, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, the 87-year-old – one of the world’s first users of the innovative technology – appeared as an all-talking hologram shortly after she was cremated. After giving a short speech about her life (including being a Holocaust survivor) and her spiritual views, she answered questions from family members who attended the funeral. Smith had videotaped herself giving answers about six months before her death, spending several hours over the course of two days.
Stephen Smith
The technology, available in Britain from this week, was created by her son Dr Stephen Smith, co-founder and chief executive of StoryFile. Smith admitted the hologram “shocked” those in attendance and said his blessed mother answered their questions “with new detail and honesty,” including about her difficult childhood, her parents’ divorce, her political views, her predictions for the future of the world, etc.
The original idea for the creation of StoryLife in 2017 was to preserve in memory the stories of Holocaust survivors, as well as other historical figures, but along the way it was realized that it could be used more widely in funerals (and not only). Anyone who wants to can create a “story” on StoryFile and choose to answer questions before death about topics they think might be of interest to their friends and family. e.g. about his past love affairs or about his other secrets.
Contrary to manufactured videos (deepfake), this technology he doesn’t mince words in the human mouth. If the deceased’s hologram (i.e. the AI ​​system) does not have a relevant answer ready for a question, then the deceased “asks” the questioner to ask something else.
Stephen Smith emphasized that thanks to the new technology his mother “was somehow present” at her funeral and pointed out that her words were truly her own and not the creation of artificial intelligence. Rolo Carpenter, creator of the CleverBot chatbot, confirmed that StoryFile’s intelligent system does not try to invent its own answers, it simply selects – depending on the post-mortem question – the appropriate video responses from a predetermined stock in its database.
Smith foresees 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 videotape their lives on a continuous basis, so that later it appears that their 18-year-old self, their 50-year-old self, etc., are speaking.
A more advanced step would be to use artificial intelligence to create a fully synthetic (digital) “persona” of a dead person, which Smith considers impossible. “Everything about us is completely unique. There’s no way anyone can create a synthetic version of me, even if it looks like me,” he said, something Carpenter agreed with.
RES-EMP
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