The line between life and the afterlife blurs in the age of AI, allowing us to have conversations with the dearly departed, or at least their virtual likeness. Grief Tech is redefining our goodbyes, giving us a way to communicate with a version of our loved ones who have passed away. But the technology also has applications beyond consoling survivors – it can provide a vast catalog of conversational video AI with historic figures for educational purposes, and build family trees in a way that has never been done before.
Companies such as Storyfile, HereAfter AI, Seance AI, and YOV (You, Only Virtual) offer AI-powered biographers. Think of Superman learning of his origins from a collection of Kryptonian thumb drives, as his deceased father’s hologram appears and Superman talks with him to find out where he is from. Such storytelling is no longer science fiction.
Building a deep reservoir of information on a person’s life takes time, but the more information that is gathered, the better the responses for posterity. Obviously, the information collection is easier if done through interviews with the individual. If the individual has died, their life story must be told through photos, videos, voice recordings, emails, texts and other information.
AI natural language processing algorithms build a virtual representation of the individual, and their life can be told through video, text or audio.
YOV offers Versona Voice. “Versona Voice redefines how we experience grief and loss by allowing you to stay connected with loved ones, even after they’re gone,” according to the company. “With Versona Voice, you can create a digital persona, or Versona, of someone dear to you and make phone calls just as you would before their passing. Whether you seek comfort from those you miss or want to provide companionship to those who miss you, YOV’s proprietary technology enables authentic, lifelike conversations. Versonas are virtual personas created using the existing communications between you and your loved one, designed to offer the most authentic experience possible when staying connected with those you’ve lost—or even creating a version of yourself for others. YOV continually refines the process to make each Versona feel more genuine and lifelike. Though we’re just at the beginning, every interaction helps your Versona grow more aware and responsive. As technology evolves, we believe Versonas will reshape how we experience grief and loss, offering new ways to stay connected to those who matter most.”
Storyfile was created to record the memories of Holocaust survivors, according to company founder Stephen D. Smith.
“Imagine a future where you could ask anyone, anywhere, at any time, any question,” Mr. Smith said. “At Storyfile, we created conversational video, it’s the revolutionary video that allows video to talk back. Talking with conversational video will soon be an integral part of our daily lives, from entertainment, to education, to musical verse, to the metaverse. At Storyfile, we built the AI-powered Conversa platform to make creating conversational video easier for whatever you want.”
Conversa supports 15 different languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Thai, Turkish and Russian. Storyfile adheres to a policy not to create answers or comments that can’t be attributed to the individuals own words.
Storyfile prefers not to use the phrase Grief Tech to describe what it does. In an interview with Techstrong AI, Val Jones, the chief technology officer for Storyfile, said the company gives anyone the tool it needs to preserve their own story, the story of friends or relatives, and the ability to learn from people who have experienced historic events or have made history.
Dr. Jones, who holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Southern California, was approached about 14 years ago by USC’s Shoah Foundation, which was founded by movie director Stephen Spielberg as a way to record the stories of Holocaust survivors. The foundation sought her expertise in helping it to bring to life the testimonies of survivors. Thousands of interviews with survivors had previously been recorded but no one was interacting with the material, aside from the occasional grad student who viewed it as part of their studies, Dr. Jones said.
“We started interviewing Holocaust survivors and connecting their testimony to this AI retrieval algorithm so that when people asked questions, it would find the best story within the database and play it back for them,” Dr. Jones said. “We did 70 interviews in this format, so visitors to museums around the country could talk to these digital holocaust survivors. As we did the work, there was this sort of idea in the back of our minds that ten or twenty years from now these people aren’t going to be around. So, from that perspective, it became about trying to preserve their stories for future generations. It wasn’t specifically about grief. We wanted people to be able to meet the survivors and build a personal connection. As we were doing it, people started to ask us, well, what about my grandmother, what about this civil rights leader, what about all these other people, their stories have value too. We believe everyone has a story to tell, so that is why we founded Storyfile, and we’ve continued to make the technology easier to use, trying to make it more accessible so that anyone can record their story.
