Star Trek legend William Shatner discovers powerful new way to live forever
StoryFile, an innovative AI company, has developed lifelike, interactive 3D avatars that allow people to 'live on' after death, sharing memories and answering questions in the same natural and conversational manner of a real person.
Individuals like philanthropist Michael Staenberg, 71, and Star Trek star William Shatner, 94, have used StoryFile to immortalize both their experiences and personalities.
Staenberg, a property developer and philanthropist who has given away more than $850 million, said: 'I hope to pass my knowledge on, and the good I've created.'
The technology captures video interviews, transforming them into hologram-style avatars that use generative AI, similar to ChatGPT, to respond dynamically to questions.
StoryFile's avatars have been employed in museums since 2021 to preserve the voices of historical figures like WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors, and by terminally ill individuals to connect with family after death.
Until now, the company has offered a premium service costing tens of thousands of dollars, but a new, affordable app launching this summer will allow everyday people to record their own AI avatars for less than the cost of a monthly cellphone plan.
Staenberg added that he'd like to imagine other business people and family members still having a chance to interact with him 30 years from now.
'It's important to get my version so the details aren't forgotten. I've had quite a crazy life, so I'd have a lot of stories that I don't want people to forget,' Staenberg said.
More than 2,000 users have used the previous version. However, the new Storyfile app will allow users to interview themselves on video and create an intelligent avatar they can keep adding chapters to as they answer more questions about their lives.
Previously, the Storyfile avatars could understand the intent of people talking to them, but could only respond with pre-recorded video answers.
Storyfile's newer AI avatars will be able to generate an answer based on the persona from the recorded interviews, and it will be able to approximate an answer to any question.
The company has gotten a huge number of daily queries from people who have been diagnosed with terminal illness and who hope to preserve their legacy in an avatar.
Storyfile CEO Alex Quinn said: 'Every day we'll get very sad and heart-wrenching emails, saying things like "My son was just diagnosed with terminal cancer."'
Others have expressed fear over their parents aging, asking for a way to keep their memories intact for the future.
Quinn added that Storyfile would never be able to accommodate all those requests if they had to send their video production team to all of those customers.
The solution was to make a 'DIY' version, where people record their own answers to an AI 'interviewer' using the app - answering questions on everything from their career to their family to their tastes in food.
The app will come with 'permanent cold storage' so that avatars remain safe once recorded, and users can keep adding new video and new information.
Quinn admitted that because Storyfile avatars use generative AI there is a possibility it could initially say 'crazy' stuff, but noted that the replica of the person will become more and more realistic the more users speak to the program.
'It's almost like an AI FaceTime where you're interviewed by an AI interviewer, and it's able to probe and go deep on certain topics,' the CEO said.
'If you've got a couple days, or you've got free time, and you want to understand your question every now and then, you're just going to keep on adding to your digital memories, and it's going to get more and more sophisticated, more and more personalized,' he continued.
Tech pioneers such as inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil have already used AI to recreate lost relatives.
Kurzweil created a 'dad bot' based on information about his father Fred in 2016.
The 'Fredbot' could converse with Kurzweil, revealing that what his father loved about topics like gardening. It even remembered his father's belief that the meaning of life was love.
'I actually had a conversation with him, which felt a lot like talking to him,' Kurzweil told Rolling Stone Magazine in 2023.
He believed that some form of his dad bot AI would be released to the public one day, enabling everyone to stay in touch with their dead relatives from beyond the grave.
'We'll be able to actually create something like a large language model that really represents somebody else by having enough information,' he predicted.
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