An AI company helps Michael Bommer, 61, create a meaningful digital identity to preserve his legacy before he passes away.
Eternos.Life captured Bommer’s voice, personality, and memories to program his digital version. The team integrated data capture, transcription, and chat functionalities so that his family could continue to engage with him for generations, according to the company website.
“It gives me the opportunity to be there,” he told Eternos.Life.
Creating a digital version
Feeding the AI 300 sentences, the program first learned how to replicate his voice, NPR reports. He recounted 150 stories from his life, and specifically, information pertaining to his values and the wisdom he’d like to leave behind.
“Imagine it like a cloud,” Boomer explains.
All the “knowledge” he left for the AI-version of himself lives in a database similar to a cloud. If someone asks it a question, the AI then selects pieces from the recordings stored in the cloud and “puts them together in a strain to answer.”The system is so “intelligent,” even, the co-founders say, that it carries the values that a person held in their life. Already, the results have impressed Mr. Bommer and his entire family, according to the Independent.
“…While doing the first test very early in the process, my wife said, ‘Hey, this is you,’” Bommer told NYPost. He went on to say that the AI was “spot on,” able to function bilingually as Bommer speaks German and English.
His digital self contains his words about his life, family, career, and more. It can share stories, advice, and speak to his wife before she goes to bed. “My love, have sweet dreams and I love you very much. Have a peaceful sleep.” The digital self can even write a poem or tell a bedtime story, as per the NYPost.
Though other AI life preservation programs exist, the Eternos.life has enough “intuition” to reason like a person can, effectively able to choose from a field of information and even develop it.
By inputting photographs and videos into “the cloud,” which is the next step for Bommer’s digital self, visuals can then accompany the text and voice “to create an artificially intelligent neural network,” according to NYPost.
An AI technology that advances preservation
When Michael Boomer, a software designer from Berlin, Germany discovered that he was terminally ill, he posted about it on social media as per the Independent. His message caught Robert LoCascio’s attention, Eternos.life co-founder, as an old friend and colleague, as per the NYPost. He got in touch with Bommer about preserving his legacy with AI, and he leaped at the chance.
The process normally takes weeks to months. However, Bommer did not have that amount of time. The Eternos.life team thus worked “tirelessly” to capture his essence, so he could leave his values, not just his memories, behind, and continue to connect with his family.
The goal for Eternos.life seems to provide people a way to create a creative will or “digital memoir.” It doesn’t concern their estate, but nevertheless, they can plan it in advance, so they can leave behind what they find meaningful about themselves and their lives. And as the father of four sons, the process of making this digital self helped Brommer bond with them, and he hopes his digital self will enable him to be present for his grandchildren and beyond.
“And so if you write your memoir,” Bommer said as per NPR, “that’s not eternal life. So I see it more as a tool, right? I want to give my knowledge and experience. And then I’m gone… And I want the next generations to inherit my experience and my knowledge as much as possible.”
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Maria Mocerino Originally from LA, Maria Mocerino has been published in Business Insider, The Irish Examiner, The Rogue Mag, Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, and now Interesting Engineering.
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