A Chinese man has managed to create a virtual version of his late grandmother, by merging an AI image generator and ChatGPT to create an immersive conversational experience, and the results have been made available for public viewing.
The 24-year-old man, surnamed Wu, had been bereft when his grandmother died, and so he decided to upload her photos and recordings of her voice to Midjourney, an AI image generator. He then used ChatGPT and trained it with the material to create an AI version of his late grandmother. Afterward, he uploaded the material to D-ID, a website that enables users to create a interactive experience that is as human-like as possible.
Wu demonstrated his work by having a conversation with his AI grandma, telling her that he and his father would be returning to their hometown to celebrate the Lunar New Year. “Grandma, my Dad and I will go back to our hometown to celebrate the Lunar New Year with you this year,” he said. “My Dad called you last time. What did you say to him?”
“I told him not to drink wine. Be thrifty and not play cards,” the AI grandmother replied.
Wu went on to explain that, while his AI grandmother is currently only able to hold simple conversations, he hopes to achieve greater things with the project. “I shared many details of my grandma’s life to ChatGPT, hoping it could understand my grandma’s family background and speech so it could communicate with me in my grandma’s tone. I feel good being able to look at grandma and talk more with her,” Wu added.
There are an increasing number of companies offering services for conversational AI, and one such company is a Korean firm which lets people talk to their deceased loved ones. All that is needed for this is for recordings and/or photographs of the person and the AI does the rest.
The use of such technologies is not just to act as a comfort, but also to preserve the memory and conversation of the person, providing a service that would have never been available before. It is, in many ways, a revolutionary technology which could prove to be beneficial in multiple ways.
