People may be able to "live forever" with their loved ones even after passing away thanks to a new AI technology that may be available by the end of this year, a scientist has claimed.
Dr Pratik Desai, who is an expert in AI and has founded multiple start-ups, is urging anyone to regularly record their parents, elders and loved ones.
He believes that once enough data, including voice and video recordings, is available, people may be able to upload them to a computer and feel close to them even after they leave their physical body.
Dr Desai tweeted: "Start regularly recording your parents, elders and loved ones.
"With enough transcript data, new voice synthesis and video models, there is a 100% chance that they will live with you forever after leaving physical body.
"This should be even possible by end of the year."
Last year, Artur Sychov, CEO and founder of Somnium Space, a version of the metaverse, decided to create a new feature called "Live Forever" mode following the death of his father.
The forthcoming feature effectively allows people to have their movements and conversations stored as data, then duplicated as an avatar that can move, talk and sound like you - which can continue after a person dies.
The metaverse expert said the feature will allow people to talk to their dead loved ones whenever they wish, even after their death.
He told VICE: "Literally, if I die—and I have this data collected—people can come or my kids, they can come in, and they can have a conversation with my avatar, with my movements, with my voice.
"You will meet the person. And you would maybe for the first 10 minutes while talking to that person, you would not know that it's actually AI. That’s the goal."
And in June 2022, Amazon said Alexa may be able to mimic the voice of dead relatives in its plans to "make memories last".
The online retail giant showed off the new technology at its re:MARS conference in Las Vegas which looks at artificial-intelligence for machine learning, automation, robotics and space.
Rohit Prasad, Amazon's Alexa AI senior vice president and head scientist, said it was Amazon's way of bringing people closer to their relatives who were lost in the coronavirus pandemic.
He said the plan was to build greater trust in the interactions users have with Alexa by putting more "human attributes of empathy and affect".
"These attributes have become even more important during the ongoing pandemic when so many of us have lost ones that we love," he added.
Former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil, 75, is also working on a digital afterlife for humans in a bid to resurrect his father.
He told BBC in 2012: "I will be able to talk to this re-creation. Ultimately, it will be so realistic it will be like talking to my father."
He added: "A very good way to express all of this documentation would be to create an avatar that an AI would create that would be as much like my father as possible, given the information we have about him, including possibly his DNA."
