Why we are all immortal now

The convergence of digital avatars, Gen AI, and VR will give us all the ability to be ‘digitally immortal', with not just our likeness, but also our personalities.?

I recently tested on Linked In, a comparison between the real me, and a HeyGen version of me (judge for yourself in the video). Few could tell the difference.? Mattel's EVP for Technology also posted on Linked In, showing how he had generated an entire TED talk on Chat GPT, and then fed the script into his HeyGen avatar, and produced an eerily good CGI twin, ready to present his talk.

Soon, thanks to AI and other advances, not only will we be able to produce digital twins that look and sound like us.? We will be able to produce versions that have our personality, or at least some semblance of our character.???

Companies are already building multi modal models trained on everything you’ve ever published, photos, interests, plus additional context based on your lifespan (cultural norms, major events like Covid). ? This technology can enable not just a digital likeness, but one that will start to also mimic our personalities. In the not too distant future, these digital clones will be available in real-time, and able to have a conversation.? In a few more years,? advancements and access to? AR / VR headsets will enable full 3 dimensional representations of our digital twins.

Delphi.ai is already creating AI digital clones of CEOs,? influencers, business people and celebrities, both living and dead.? Powered by compiling a subject's posts, videos, reading lists, Slack, Notion, and podcasts,?to produce, what they claim is an accurate representation of a personality and an individual's knowledge.

Delphi’s current direction is to build out a business model, where consumers could directly access a digital clone's expertise in a specific area (for example, technology, or investing), and to democratise and scale access to that expertise.? ?

In the same way we currently turn to photographs, or a video, to remember those that are no longer with us, a digital version also offers a more vivid way to remember not only a likeness, but personality, body language, and voice. One distressing aspect of dementia, is the gradual erasing of personality. Capturing a digital twin, before this happens, may make it easier for both family and patient, to recall someone’s true personality and memories.

Perhaps it all feels a bit, well, creepy at the moment. ? But often, something that feels ‘creepy’ or weird is a way of expressing human discomfort with unfamiliar concepts.? Early internet on-line dating used to be thought of as a bit odd, but now over 60% of American couples met on-line.

Being able to build digital clones ourselves, powered by AI, effectively makes us digitally immortal.? So, if soon we could engineer fully interactive versions of ourselves, trained on our digital footprint, and able to project our personality and thoughts, would you want it???

Let me know what you think in the comments.