- Deep Brain AI’s Re: Memory technology and Twin Protocol’s AI twins make realistic posthumous interaction possible in 2024.
- Digital twins could represent living individuals, handling daily tasks and allowing a person to be in two places at once.
The film “Truly, Madly, Deeply” released in 1990 and starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, presents a narrative where Stevenson’s character, Nina, copes with the loss of her boyfriend Jamie, who returns as a ghost. Initially a narrative device of fantasy, the idea of reuniting with deceased loved ones is inching toward feasibility with advancements in AI technology, allowing digital interactions that mimic real-life conversations.
By 2024, technology has evolved to enable interactions with digital avatars that represent deceased individuals. This capability is showcased in a South Korean documentary from 2020, where a mother interacts with an AI representation of her deceased daughter, facilitated by scripted AI-driven dialogue. While this application stirred ethical debates, it also underscored potential uses in grief therapy.
Advancements in AI technology have led companies like Deep Brain AI and Twin Protocol to develop more sophisticated systems that can generate realistic digital replicas. Deep Brain AI’s Re: Memory technology, revealed at the CES Show in 2024, uses videos, voice recordings, and AI algorithms to create avatars capable of real-time interaction.
Twin Protocol focuses on creating digital twins, allowing individuals to produce a digital legacy that can interact with others posthumously. This technology was detailed at the SingularityNET Internal Ecosystem Meeting in Thailand in November 2024, highlighting its use of AI and blockchain for secure, realistic interactions.
These technologies are not limited to memorial uses. For instance, Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, suggests that digital twins could soon undertake daily tasks such as participating in video calls or taking notes, effectively allowing a person to manage tasks in multiple locations simultaneously.
The emergence of these technologies challenges traditional conceptions of life and death, raising questions about their impact on mourning and the ethical considerations of extending human presence beyond physical existence. Concerns include the potential neglect of living individuals in favor of interacting with digital representations.
As AI technology continues to advance, it is reshaping our possibilities for maintaining connections with others, extending legacies, and even expanding our productive capacities. These innovations prompt a reevaluation of how we understand and interact with the concept of mortality, pushing the boundaries of human experience into new realms.
