WHEN Will Smith’s father was battling cancer, the Hollywood superstar had a dream.
Together, with his brother, they filmed a series of interviews with Will Sr. in order to preserve his legacy.
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They managed to collate around 16 hours of footage, but it wasn’t until the arrival of artificial intelligence expert Vincent Peters, however, that the plans to immortalize the 76-year-old forever took a very futuristic turn.
Peters, who spent four years working for Elon Musk’s Starlink company, is at the cutting edge of AI tech and has created conscious cataloging software that he believes could change the way people attempt to preserve memories in the future.
His company – Inheritance AI – hope to “extend the human experience indefinitely by leveraging the power of automation and AI.”
In more basic terms, Peters’ software helps create an AI of a loved one ensuring that clients will be able to store a fully interactive version of themselves – or someone else – for future generations to enjoy and interact with.
The top Tier 3 package will, according to their website, “create a fully autonomous AI that will be able to extrapolate responses based on inputs from the user’s timeline. These fully autonomous AIs will not be limited to specific topic areas.”
Whereas in the past holograms have been used to help illustrate and educate people about historical events – the Illinois Holocaust Museum uses a hologram, produced as a composite from thousands of video archives to bring some of their artifacts to life – Inheritance AI takes take it a step further, ensuring that clients will be able to store versions of themselves or chosen loved ones.
That’s what the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star asked Peters to do three years after his death in 2017 – and The U.S. Sun was given a glimpse of the final product, and how the tech is ready to move onto the next level with future investment.
It’s like something out of the smash-hit TV show Black Mirror and indeed, in the first season, there was an episode involving memory chips in people’s brains capable of storing memories.
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Peters has also built his own AI software called Jarvais – based on the computer called Jarvis from the Marvel films built by the genius character Tony Stary – that is effectively your point of contact when it comes to asking questions of your digitally restored mother or father.
“It’s all about having the chance to tap in memories,” he told The U.S. Sun.
“Will and his family ended up with 16 hours of footage – but who’s going to watch that all?”
As Peters’ attorney also worked with the Men in Black star, moves were put in motion to preserve Will Sr.’s memory with the use of AI.
Peters said he wasn’t satisfied with the final product – ” I needed some Hollywood production” – but the genesis behind the plans are impressive and a potential game-changer.
“You have someone who dies and leaves your life, and then, they’re there again,” Peters said of the process.
“It’s not just like a video or a picture, you can talk to them.
“We took it a step further where I cloned his voice, and then, I can make him say things that he didn’t say before. It was more of an experimental thing just to see if we could do it right.”
Although that may sound interesting for some, Peters did encounter some ethical problems with the AI possibly learning about events that happened after their natural death.
At the time, the technology wasn’t at the stage where this would have been possible – yet the conversations took place.
Will Smith Sr. , for example, was a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan and Peters, together with the Smith family, were unsure whether to include their Super Bowl win of 2017 – the same year as his passing – in the AI’s knowledge bank.
“Did we want his father to have that knowledge?” asked Peters. “And then, what does that response look like? What is that conversation?”
The partnership with the Smith family may have been fleeting, yet Peters has plowed on regradless.
He’s created an 8K AI model of Marilyn Monroe and hopes to bring geniuses such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking back to life to help educate the generations of tomorrow.
“It’s been like pulling people’s teeth and nails to actually get funding for what we’re doing,” lamented Peters.
“It’s going to happen fast or slow, but the world will need to be ready when I get the money because it’s going to be a different world.”
The U.S. Sun reached out to Will Smith’s representatives for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
