A woman who died has been able to talk at her funeral with the help of AI
A dead woman was able to converse with mourners at her funeral and even answer questions that were set to her, or at least appeared to, thanks to new AI-powered technology. A few hundred years ago, humans did not have pictures to remember the dead. Moving images and videos came much later. Thanks to AI, it doesn’t have to be the same anymore, as it appears that one could still talk to the deceased.
When someone dies, they leave behind a lifetime of memories for their loved ones to grieve. The woman was able to surprise the guests at the funeral in the form of a “holographic conversational video experience,” created by a startup called StoryFile. With the help of advanced artificial intelligence and expert psychological evaluation, it creates a digital clone that lets people talk to the dead with a video tool. While this new AI method of communicating with the dead is extremely impressive if not a little creepy.
AI allows the dead woman to talk:
Marina Smith MBE passed away at 87 in the UK. At her funeral, but appeared as a hologram, seeming to come alive. The AI matched the questions from guests and played the correct clip. This was used by Los Angeles-based AI company StoryFile, which was co-founded by her son Dr. Stephen Smith, to create a two-way holographic video experience. This trains an AI system to respond to mourners’ questions in a natural way that mimics a regular conversation.
The company combines the latest studio technology with a bank of 20 synced cameras to capture the subject in Hologram-specific detail. StoryFile isn’t the only company working on bringing the dead back to life. The StoryFile technology was made available to the public in the UK this week for £39.99. Unlike ‘deepfake, the StoryFile system can make a subject say things they didn’t mean to, this StoryFile artificial intelligence technology allows people to have real-time conversations.
StoryFile’s efforts are representative of a much larger push by Silicon Valley to bring back the dead with the power of machine learning. She’s not the only one to have been revived with the power of AI by StoryFile. The former Screen Actors Guild president Ed Asner was able to answer questions from attendees at his funeral earlier. Marina Smith might have departed, but is still alive in some ways. The finished product has been uploaded on the StoryFile platform.
