14 DAY TRIAL // A project created as part of MIT’s Entrepreneurship Development Program gives you the chance to talk to dead people using Skype in a similar way that you do when video chatting with someone alive.
As weird as it may sound, the new service, which is being called Eterni.me, uses artificial intelligence to create a virtual version of someone you want to talk to. As FoxNews is reporting, registered members need to submit information regarding a dead person, such as chat logs, photos, emails, and social network accounts.
The service then automatically generates a digital portrait and avatar and allows you to initiate a video chatting session using Skype.
“Eterni.me collects almost everything that you create during your lifetime, and processes this huge amount of information using complex Artificial Intelligence algorithms,” Eterni.me states in the about section of the official website.
“Then it generates a virtual YOU, an avatar that emulates your personality and can interact with, and offer information and advice to, your family and friends after you pass away. It’s like a Skype chat from the past.”
It does sound a bit scary, that’s for sure, but the developing team behind the project has promised to push the service out of private beta testing as soon as possible, so expect everyone to be allowed to try out the service in the coming months.
“Eterni.me will launch soon, and we'll accept new users gradually,” the developers mentioned near a form that allows users to register for the private beta testing.
Eterni.me claims that talking to dead people is “an incredibly challenging problem of humanity,” so this new technology is not at all supposed to be lugubrious, but to actually lend us a hand and bring a legacy for our families.