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Live long and prosper: How AI could help William Shatner live on forever

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The idea of having a sit-down chat with a Hollywood star remains out of reach for most people. But in a bid to preserve his legacy, former Star Trek actor William Shatner is creating an AI-powered interactive version of himself that will live for ever – and be accessible to all.

In celebration of his 90th birthday, Shatner is working with LA-based company StoryFile to tape interviews involving more than 1,500 questions to create an interactive video programme with an AI component that will enable fans to ask him questions and get a direct and tailored response.

StoryFile’s chief executive Heather Maio-Smith explains that the company uses mobile native cloud-based AI-driven technology to boldly go where no video has gone before. “Imagine being able to ask your great-grandmother for her chicken soup recipe,” she adds. “This is the future of memory and legacy preservation.”

Astronauts, civil rights activists and Holocaust survivors have already created similar video programmes. The technology will be made available to the wider public in June.

For Shatner, the motivation is sentimental rather than ego-driven: “For my children and my children’s children and all my children’s loved ones and all the loved ones of the loved ones, it’s my gift to you through time.”

‘Resurrected’

The interactive element is the latest development in this area of technology. Last October, Kim Kardashian’s father Robert was “resurrected” as a hologram (inset below) for a bizarre 40th birthday present from Kanye West. The reality star tweeted the video clip to her 69.6 million followers, describing it as “a special surprise from heaven”.

Kanye West gives Kim Kardashian birthday hologram of dead father. Kanye West has surprised his wife Kim Kardashian with a hologram of her late father for her 40th birthday. The reality star posted a recording of the hologram of Robert Kardashian, who died in 2003. Image from twitter https://twitter.com/KimKardashian Kim Kardashian West @KimKardashian ? For my birthday, Kanye got me the most thoughtful gift of a lifetime. A special surprise from heaven. A hologram of my dad. ? It is so lifelike! We watched it over and over, filled with emotion.
Kanye West gave Kim Kardashian birthday hologram of dead father.
(Photo: Twitter/Kim Kardashian West)

These projections are not technically holograms or robotics but instead rely on an optical illusion, first discovered in the 19th century, and known as Pepper’s ghost, to create a 3-D image.

Dead celebrities reappearing via optical illusion have more typically been linked with concerts. The rapper Tupac Shakur’s hologram on stage at Coachella in 2012 is one of the most memorable. And museums are also embracing interactive 3-D technology.

The USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles, for example, is pioneering it as a way to allow Holocaust survivors to reach audiences beyond their own lifetimes. In January 2020, the foundation launched a project with the Sydney Jewish Museum which for decades has invited survivors to share their tales of resilience.

In an Australian first, the museum is now capturing these stories in hologram form. The end result could be a survivor on a flat screen responding interactively to questions or as a 3D figure standing right in front of visitors.

“Hearing a Holocaust survivor has probably been the most important part of anyone’s experience here,” says Norman Seligman, CEO of the Sydney museum. “We really have to do something to cater for the day when we will no longer have survivors at the museum. This is the most exciting project we have done.”

Historical precedent

Preserving one’s legacy is not new, of course. The pop artist Andy Warhol was one of history’s greatest time-capsule enthusiasts. Over the course of his life, he consigned 300,000 of his everyday possessions into 610 cardboard boxes, which were found and opened in 2014.

But the custom goes back much further: almost 4,000 years ago, Babylonians buried clay plates inscribed with messages to the future inside buildings, while the Egyptian pyramids preserved artefacts for millennia.

“The ancient Egyptians were keen for their memory to survive after death because their spirit lived on and required nourishment. Those with means commissioned statues or stelae (slabs of stone) carved with personal text and images,” says Ashley Cooke, lead curator of antiquities at Liverpool’s World Museum, which has the largest ancient Egyptian gallery after the British Museum. “Only the very elite Egyptians would mummify their dead – an expensive process that could take 70 days and transformed the dead into a sacred object, called a sah, or noble one.”

The new AI technology could influence all our lives – especially as in-home assistants thrive. Mylestone, an app for Amazon Echo, can go through Facebook timelines to gather data by studying images and landmarks and record your story based on your photos.

“Such use of a simple technology makes intergenerational connections highly accessible,” says Holly Friend, a senior foresight writer at strategic consultancy The Future Laboratory, which predicts it may have an impact on the way future generations work. “Innovators are already creating AI-enabled avatars of key personalities, enabling them to work longer while also being in several locations simultaneously – driven by the needs of a globalised, 24-hour business cycle.”

Investment bank UBS has started trialling a lifelike avatar of Daniel Kalt, its chief investment officer in Switzerland. “The digital version of Kalt is available to book for on-site meetings to guide customers through the bank’s research and answer their queries while also making eye contact,” says Friend.

“We can expect to see more public figures replicate themselves not only to fulfil more commitments but to extend their legacy. If notable people can use AI to preserve their legacy, it could be used as an educational tool.”

Such developments do not come without risk. “It’s important to consider making these technologies more accessible to the masses,” says Friend, “to ensure future generations are not only seeing the richest 1 per cent of historical figures, but also those who are socially and culturally important.”

All content in this article is for informational purposes only and in no way serves as investment advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies, commodities and stocks is very risky and can lead to capital losses.
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