An artificial intelligence system known as Project December claims to be “the first system in the world of its kind” that can “simulate a text-based conversation with anyone. Anyone, including someone who is no longer living.” I thought I’d give it a try.
When visiting his grandmother’s grave at Toronto’s Beth Tzedec cemetery, Alex Josephson can scan a QR code on the tombstone to activate a virtual-reality tour of her life through Cumulus, a program that he co-designed. ‘I want the software to have the impact of touring a beautiful building or a place,’ he says.The idea for Cumulus, currently the most viable version of a digital afterlife, took root in Alex Josephson’s brain as he watched his father almost die, twice, during the pandemic. Mr.
An array of daguerreotypes floats in front of me. “These were taken of my family from 1840 to 1930. The result is this massive tome, all these albums. And then suddenly, in 1995: nothing.” Digital photography had taken hold by then, consigning millions of photographs to purgatory in a computer’s memory. “I didn’t want that record to die or get lost. Call me crazy.” Alex Josephson has reinvented the family album and the graveyard as one.
The last time Mr. Josephson tested the site – sitting on the grass in front of his grandmother Meryl’s grave wearing VR goggles and waving his arms around – a gravedigger tractored over and asked what he was doing. Mr. Josephson explained. The grave digger asked if he could give it a try. “My rabbi and the director of the cemetery,” he said, “have been saying that everybody’s asking about this.”Those were my flaws, Willie. I’m not perfect, but I did the best I could with what I had.
MyWishes, a British online memorial management system, was started by an Englishman named James Norris. “I lost my father at an early age,” Mr. Norris says. “I was 11 years old at his funeral thinking, I don’t want church music, I want Guns ‘n’ Roses at mine.” Out of this desire Mr. Norris developed Dead Social, a service that lets customers create a goodbye message to be disseminated after their demise. “Once you’ve created those messages, you assign your digital executor,” Mr. Norris explains.
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